As of today the 1st of December, millions of mobile phones in India will be blocked as part of a government initiative to ban mobile phones that do not have a valid IMEI, and it is estimated that there could be as many as 25 million handsets without IMEI in India reports cellular-news.
Apparently operators have been offering those without IMEI a reprogramming service to deliver a valid IMEI but it is still presumed there are millions of illegal IMEI less mobile phones being used in India.
It is expected that the ones hardest hit by the government ban will be the user with a low end device manufactured by Chinese firms who would have wanted to cut costs by avoiding the IMEI programming stage.
The reason for the banning of IMEI less mobile phones in India is according to the government mobile phones without IMEI numbers are more hard to track and could potentially be used by terrorists.