The Lebanese Ministry of telecommunication along with the local Mobile network operators were increasingly confronted with the emerging of stolen, cloned and fraudulent terminals on mobile networks. This matter represents a real danger to the public, homeland security, government income and operators’ networks.
Therefore, the new measures of inMobiles MIRS (Mobile Identity Registration System) platform set under the Ministry of Telecommunications regulations, aim at regulating this sector through a new reliable system and making sure that the import of mobile phones into Lebanese territories is in conformity with the law and that imported devices are not counterfeit.
inMobiles’ MIRS has been fully developed in house by a team of more than one hundred highly skilled engineers and helped benefiting the Lebanese Government by: (1) ensuring the compliance of mobile devices existing on the telecommunication market with international standards, through the certification of all devices according to the IMEI; (2) preventing all counterfeit or stolen devices, or those that do not conform to international standards, from functioning on the network and accessing it; (3) receiving declarations; (4) defining technical standards of telecommunications equipment and terminals; (5) proceeding with approvals required for manufacturing, importing and marketing every device connected on the network and accessible to the public; (6) rationalizing and increase tax revenues; and (7) increasing revenues generated by the treasury due to the collection of customs duties.
Consequently, inMobiles, in partnership with the Lebanese Ministry of Telecommunications and the local mobile network operators “Touch” and “Alfa”, established practical procedures that the subscriber can adopt to make sure that his/her device is compliant. Subscribers can contact the respective MNO Customer Service for further information or send an empty SMS free of charge to the service dedicated Short code and they will receive an instant message explaining the status and model of their device and the steps to follow in case it wasn’t compliant. The subscriber can also send an SMS with the IMEI number of their device to the same Short code and they will receive an instant message stating the devices’ model.
Although and in order to facilitate the examination process, inMobiles’ MIRS has also dedicated a specific section within the Ministry website so that the subscribers can enter the IMEI number and get the information they need on their device’s status, model and compliancy.
As a result, and comparing the difference between TAX income of August 2017 and August 2018, InMobiles’ MIRS platform exceeded the mentioned revenue of 20 times, and this number is subject to increase onwards.
Source: Inmobiles Press Release