Australia’s world-leading mobile phone blocking program has been highlighted in San Francisco this week following a spate of violent robberies of smartphones from people walking down the street in the US.

The San Francisco Chronicle highlighted AMTA’s Lost and Stolen program and IMEI blocking, which has acted as a deterrent for would-be thieves because stolen mobiles are rendered inoperable on all networks in Australia. The newspaper contrasted the Australian approach with that in the United States where they have no IMEI-blocking program.

An AMTA spokesman told the Chronicle that stealing smartphones in Australia was a “waste of time” because the anti-theft program detected a mobile phone’s electronic serial number, known as the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number, then shared this information across all networks in Australia.

AMTA figures showed that in the 12-month period from July 2010 until June 2011 there were 171,000 IMEI blocked across all networks with 43,250 subsequently unblocked at the request of owners. The net result of 127,750 is a 0.5 percentage point decrease in the blocking activity compared to the same period in 2010-11.

These figures compare to 215,400 in 2004 and 45,800 unblocks, giving a net blocking figure of 169,600 or nearly 25 per cent higher than the latest 2011 figure.

“We think thieves have got the message because of the 25 per cent fall in net blocking activity over the past seven years. This is against a backdrop of a huge increase in mobile services in operation over this seven-year period,” said an AMTA spokesman.

The San Francisco Chronicle asked if AMTA had any messages for American carriers. “We would not dream of telling American carriers what do. We would just say that we have gone down a path and we are very happy with it,” said the AMTA spokesman.

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