Indonesia’s black-market phone prevention plan bricks a whole bunch of handsets
- Reference: 1602567071
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/10/13/ceir_indonesia_imei_mess/
- Source link:
The nation’s plan was hatched in 2019 in response to the scourge of black-market handhelds imported into Indonesia by folks with little interest in paying import taxes or whether customers would enjoy good network connections. The presence of black market phones also threatened local manufacturers.
Indonesia therefore decided no cellphone could touch local networks if the unique International Mobile Equipment Identity number (IMEI) baked into every handset wasn't registered with the government. It's since established a database to list IMEIs, called the centralized equipment identity register (CEIR). If a device isn't listed in CEIR it’s a virtual brick right out of the box if used in Indonesia.
CEIR opened for business on September 15, 2020. And not long afterwards it lost the ability to record new IMEIs, seemingly because it lacks the capacity to do so. But the rest of the scheme acts as intended: if an IMEI isn’t in the CEIR, a phone because can't use local cellular networks.
Which means that new phones rolling off local production lines, or imports coming off the docks, effectively can’t be sold and used.
For local manufacturers, that’s a cashflow-killer. Offshore smartphone-makers get the double whammy of working under a new scheme that explicitly protects local vendors and having that scheme mess up their sales.
The Register understands that frantic talks are now taking place to figure out how to get CEIR working, with one option being a purge of all currently stored IMEIs.
At this point readers may be asking why Indonesia uses a whitelist instead of a blacklist. The answer probably lies in the difficulty of policing imports across Indonesia’s 17,000-plus islands and their combined 54,000km of coastline. Throw in the fact that by some estimates Indonesia’s mobile phone black market exceeds ten million units a year and the nation clearly has quite a challenge. ®
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[1] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
What, you think they are incompetent, they know all about the problems with Excel, so they opted for what the big boys use, Access.
Given there's 260m+ Indonesians, and the top 2 operators have more than 220m subscribers between them (src: wiki), both Excel and Access will readily break
Cut the fluff:
Both Excel and Access readily break.
Re: Cut the fluff:
I like mine with warm milk on winter mornings.
320m phones in total - source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/geos/id.html
It is quite normal for there to be more phones than people in a country.
Yup, the UK bust through that metric a while ago, for instance. wrt Indonesia, wiki only lists the number of subs of two operators, and they're a bit out of date. There's at least 3 other operators in the country, so fully expect the population of mobiles to exceed the population.
The old lady who lived near me...
...lived by:
"I am not rich enough to be able to afford cheap products."
Re: The old lady who lived near me...
My rule on tools: Purchase the correct tool once.
I'd rather spend $100 on a good (if minimal) socket set, than I would $19.95 on a "197 piece chromed vanadium tool set with fitted case" ... You gets what you pays for. Unless you like shelling out perfectly good coin for the same tool again. And again. And ...
Re: The old lady who lived near me...
"And that's not all! With every purchase of our bargain toolkit we'll give you GIVE YOU a free first-aid kit with a value of £70!"
Re: The old lady who lived near me...
BUT WAIT! If you order now, we'll DOUBLE your order! That's right, TWO 197 piece chromed vanadium tool sets with fitted cases, and TWO free first-aid kits, each valued at £70!!! ( Just pay separate shipping and handling. All major credit cards accepted. ) Operators are standing by, so CALL NOW!
Re: Purchase the correct tool once.
Generally, the first time I buy a thingA I tend not to shell out for the premium product - it may not be obvious to me what the "best" make of thingA is, I may find out that after all I hardly ever use the thingA, it may be I decide that a different sort of thingA would have been better. Then, if it turns out that I *do* need a second thingA, because the first is (or was) useful - but crap/broken/etc - I know now that spending good money on a decent version of the thingA makes sense.
Still, as ever, everyone is entitled to decide on their own strategy. There is, after all, a certain pleasure at having a high quality thingA in the toolbox, even if you never have reason to use it.
Re: Purchase the correct tool once.
That's my mistake, then - I keep [1]Thing1 and Thing2 in my toolbox and everytime I open it I end up having to rebuild the house.
[1] https://seuss.fandom.com/wiki/Thing_One_and_Thing_Two
"seemingly because it lacks the capacity to do so"
I assume this means it has the capability but has not catered for the volumes, it could be read either way. That does sound like poor planning. Maybe the capacity was supposed to expand dynamically?
Re: "seemingly because it lacks the capacity to do so"
Or it could be that this is a government project, and like all such projects it's a complete cockup and money pit right from the git-go.
Re: "seemingly because it lacks the capacity to do so"
How to get one? government money pit project!
Re: "seemingly because it lacks the capacity to do so"
So maybe they did use Excel after all.
Some of the project managers heard about that newfangled xlsx format, that it doesn't suffer the limits of the old xls format... 2 + 2 = 69 and off they went. Outstanding! We'll have this done in a week! Trebles all round!!
What about roaming?
I get that travelers landing at their airports will find their own handsets have become wifi-only? Or have the authorities exempted foreign-registered SIMs from the scheme?
Okay now in the after-Corona it's not the right time for tourism, but when it's possible to travel again I think I wouldn't mind a week or two in Bali...
It is not really a brick in the same sense that some strict lockdown measures can render the phones in (i.e not even getting to the OS).
I am sure the phones can still use wifi and play shite games.
I wonder about foreign handsets with foreign simcards. I doubt these will need registering or tourists might get annoyed. So this government decision is mostly to trap the denizens living in indonesia.
I hope they weren't using an "Excel database"