National Database Planned to Combat Cellphone Theft

The soaring popularity of smartphones has produced an unwelcome, if predictable, side effect: an epidemic of smartphone thefts. Now, police departments, the Federal Communications Commission and the wireless phone industry have devised a plan to fight back: the creation of a central database to track stolen phones and prevent them from being used again.

On April 10, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is scheduled to join police chiefs from New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland and representatives of a wireless industry trade group to announce the new plan, which will allow wireless providers to disable and block further use of a device once it is reported stolen. The groups are also working with members of Congress to write legislation that would make it a federal crime to tamper with a phone’s unique identifiers in an attempt to evade the blocking process. Over the next six months, each of the four largest carriers — Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile — is expected to put in place a program to disable phones reported as stolen, preventing them from being used on their own networks. Within 18 months, the FCC plans to help the companies merge their databases to create a national program that also prevents a phone from being altered to use another carrier’s network.