Context: The Union Minister of Communications, Railways and Electronics & IT recently launched the Sanchar Saathi portal.

Sanchar Sathi Portal

• It is a citizen-centric initiative of the Department of Telecommunications.

• Aim: to empower mobile subscribers, strengthen their security and increase awareness about citizen-centric initiatives of the Government.

It allows citizens to

• Check the connections registered on their names

• Report fraudulent or unrequired connections

• Block the mobile phones which are stolen/lost

• Check IMEI genuineness before buying a mobile phone

• It contains various modules like CEIR (Central Equipment Identity Register), Telecom Analytics for Fraud Management and Consumer Protection (TAFCOP) etc.

Centralized Equipment Identity Register (CEIR)

• CEIR module facilitates the tracing of lost/stolen mobile devices.

• This also facilitates blocking lost/stolen mobile devices in the network of all telecom operators so that lost/stolen devices cannot be used in India.

• If anyone tries to use the blocked mobile phone, its traceability is generated.

• Once a mobile phone is found it may be unblocked on the portal for its normal use by the citizens.

Know Your Mobile

• It facilitates the citizens to check the genuineness of IMEI of their mobile devices.

Telecom Analytics for Fraud Management and Consumer Protection (TAFCOP)

• It facilitates a user to check the number of mobile connections taken in her/him name using paper-based documents.

• User enters her mobile number on the portal and authenticates using OTP.

• The system shows the total connections taken in her name using paper-based documents (such as paper-based Aadhar, passport, etc.)

• The system allows users to report fraudulent connections.

• It also allows users to block the connections which are not required.

• Once reported by the users, the system triggers a re-verification process, and the connections are terminated.

ASTR (Artificial Intelligence and Facial Recognition powered Solution for Telecom SIM Subscriber Verification)

• Mobile connections obtained using fake/ forged documents are then used for cyber-frauds.

• To curb this menace, the Dept of Telecom has developed an AI-powered tool – ASTR to identify SIMs issued using fraudulent/forged documents.

• ASTR used various techniques of facial recognition and data analytics.

• In the first phase, connections with paper-based KYC were analysed.

Success using ASTR

• In the first phase, more than 87 crore mobile connections were analysed.

• For such a large data processing, Param-Sidhhi Supercomputer was used.

• Multiple cases were detected where one photograph was used to obtain hundreds of connections.

• A total of 40.87 Lakh suspected mobile connections were detected.