The government has announced that the National Equipment Identity Register (NEIR) system will officially be launched on December 16, with the goal of stopping the sale and use of illegal mobile phones in Bangladesh.
Authorities believe the initiative will significantly curb mobile financial service (MFS) fraud, SIM card cloning, e-KYC scams, and other forms of digital crime, while also ensuring security, transparency, and protection of government revenue in the telecommunications sector.
The announcement came on Wednesday during a press conference held at the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) headquarters in Agargaon, Dhaka.
Fayez Ahmed Taiyab, Special Assistant to the Chief Adviser on Posts, Telecommunications and IT Affairs, officially declared the introduction of NEIR at the event.
Explaining the system, he said NEIR is a centralized registration mechanism that links each mobile handset's internationally approved IMEI number with the user's National ID and SIM card. This will allow authorities to easily distinguish between legal and illegal handsets. Once activated, counterfeit or illegally imported mobile phones will no longer operate on national networks.
Referring to data from several organizations, Fayez Ahmed Taiyab said a 2024 Bangladesh Bank report found that 73 per cent of digital fraud originated from illegal or unregistered devices. In addition, combined data from BTRC and mobile financial service providers revealed that 85 per cent of e-KYC fraud in 2023 occurred through unregistered or reprogrammed handsets.
That same year, approximately 180,000 mobile theft complaints were recorded, which NEIR will be capable of automatically blocking. The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has also estimated annual revenue losses of around Tk 500 crore due to illegal phone imports - a problem NEIR is expected to eliminate, he added.
"NEIR will help protect government revenue, secure the local mobile manufacturing industry, and combat crime," Fayez Ahmed Taiyab said, and adding that "It is not merely a technical system but a national commitment to ensuring citizen safety, state discipline, and transparency in the telecom sector."
BTRC Chairman Major General (Retd.) Md Emdad ul Bari said that information about the SIM used in the mobile will also be available through NEIR. Through this, it will be possible to trace the mobile.
Representatives of the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology, BTRC, mobile network operators and mobile handset manufacturing companies were present at the press conference.
