Today’s issue of the Official Gazette included an important decision of the Information Technologies and Communication Authority (BTK). Actually, we knew about this decision a long time ago, but it has become official as of today. With the new regulation published, the “clone IMEI” era has officially ended.
We have readers who remember; A bill was accepted in the Turkish Grand National Assembly last year. This offer reduced the IMEI pool registration period, which is normally 7 years, to 1 year. Today’s issue of the Official Gazette hosts the regulation that forms the framework of that bill. The regulation, which will come into force as of January 1, 2024, will largely prevent the use of illegal phones.
The IMEI registration of the device that does not give a signal for 1 year will be canceled!
With the Regulation Amending the Regulation on the Registration of Devices Having Electronic Identity Information published in the Official Gazette, the IMEI codes of the devices will be deleted from the IMEI pool if no signal is received for 1 year. In other words, the device in question will become unregistered. Citizens who wish will be able to have their unregistered IMEI code added back to the pool. However, a very serious struggle will begin here too.
An IMEI code used by person A in the past will not be re-registered by person B!
According to the regulation, a citizen will be able to repool the IMEI code of a device that he has not used for at least 1 year. Citizens who want to do this will be sufficient to use e-Government. However, there is a situation like this: Let’s say the IMEI code of a device that has not been used by person A for at least 1 year has been cancelled. Any person B will not be able to reactivate the IMEI code that person A used in the past. The only authority here will be the importer or manufacturer of the device.
The decision published in the Official Gazette can be accessed here.
What did the bill say?
25482
