If the Indian Government gives a go ahead, VAS (value added service providers) may soon get access to information that will help track any cell phone with ease. With this service Indian users will be able to get location of any cell phone in India.
This service will really be helpful for locating lost or stolen cell phones anywhere in the country and can also help find missing persons. This service will virtually make the job difficult for mobile phone thief’s. As of now for general users, the cell phones can be traced only if the cell phone has the GPS feature with the condition that the GPS be enabled on the phone.
With the new service that the government is still studying as part of National Telecom Policy 2011, any cell phone can be traced without any GPS assistance. All that the user will need to do is to enter the mobile number in a web application.
This service may take a lot of time considering the speed at which the Indian Government works. But there are other issues also that need to be resolved one being the privacy issues as to how much information should be given out to the public.
It is still not clear what will be the input factor. For example according to sources one needs to enter the cell phone number to trace it. Now assume that the phone is stolen and the mobile thief has replaced the SIM card.
In case there is an option to search the cell phone using the IMEI number (every cell phone has a permanent unique IMEI number) then that would make sense. So even if the SIM is changes the phone can still be located.
But in either cases searching for the location of the cell phone based on the IMEI number and / or the cell phone number it may be misused by anyone. Take for example the service can be used by anyone to spy on any number.
Most probably users will not get access to search for any number, in fact they may need to register the handset they want to locate when required and may also need to validate it.
Well we will have to wait and see as what comes up and if tracking a cell phone from a website, really becomes a reality.