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The headline in today’s Times of India reads – “Chinese mobiles sans IMEI won’t buzz from Monday.”

Mobile carriers in India will be required to hit the kill switch on any/all phones that do not have (or do not immediately obtain) a true International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number. The deadline for compliance is midnight November 30, 2009 . Otherwise it’s no service for you.

IMEI is an international standard identification number assigned to each and every mobile handset. Many counterfeit (brand name knock-off) phone manufacturers don’t bother to include an IMEI number or they simply assign a phony number.

For months now India has been warning users of counterfeit phones (a.k.a. bandit phones or the Chinese term “Shanzhai ji”) that they must register their bandit phones and obtain a valid IMEI number. This campaign has been dubbed the Genuine IMEI Implantation Programme (GII), and it’s being carried out by Mobile Service Providers’ Association (MSPA) of India across the country. Many bandit phone owners have been overwhelming GII registration centers and the MSPA estimates that some 25 million bandit phones will go dead tomorrow.

Come monday, the MSPA will run a cross-reference of all legitimate IMEI numbers versus the IMEI they have on record for a network user’s handset. If the mobile user does not have an IMEI, or if the IMEI is a phony number that does not match to the make/model phone, they will require the mobile carrier shut off service for that number.

Why are India’s telecom authorities taking this action? Simple … Money and power. The”bandit phones” are manufactured without the normal telecom approval and testing protocols required by virtually every country. In addition, legit manufacturers must pay testing fees, licensing fees and taxes to authorities. Bandit phones circumvent these pesky taxes/fees. Most of the low-priced counterfeit brand phones are manufactured in China. Chinese citizens are by far the biggest users of “Shanzhai” phones but India has some 30 million in use.

It will be interesting to see if China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) opts to follow India’s lead. I don’t expect that China will be so aggressive in quashing counterfeit handsets. If they were to abruptly cutoff all “Shanzhai” phones there might be protests in the streets. China does not like unrest. There’s no real way to track the total number of “Shanzhai” phones presently in use in China, but I would not be surprised if the number was north of 100 million.

“Shanzhai”  phones should not be confused with brand name phones sold through grey-market channels. There are about 2 million real iPhones with vaild IMEI numbers in China. China Unicom will grant amnesty to any grey-market iPhone owner who wants to become a Unicom subscriber and upgrade to WCDMA 3G speeds (most are now on China Mobile’s EDGE 2G). Regardless of the fact that the IMEI may show that the iPhone was acquired in the grey-market, China Unicom (CHU) will extend an olive branch and entice the customer to become an “on contract” 3G subscriber.

For more background on “Shanzhai” culture and bandit phones, please visit iPhone Asia