Approximately 16,000 cell- phones are being stolen monthly from the users of Jamaica's two major network providers.

Information released yesterday by Digicel Jamaica, one of the island's leading mobile networks, has revealed that about 15,000 phones are reported stolen by their customers every month. In the case of the Cable and Wireless Jamaica (C&WJ), they are reporting approximately 600 reports of instruments being stolen monthly.

The large number of cases has forced Digicel to implement measures which it believes will clampdown on the usage of stolen phones on its network. The company has now decided to ban handsets that are reported lost or stolen, a step up from the previous system which only banned SIM cards and safeguarded the phone number and credit.

Digicel's move comes almost a year after Cable and Wireless made a similar decision.

Handset barring

In a release issued by Digicel, Abbi-Gaye O'Harris, mediation and roaming manager, explained "Handset barring means the customer has full control of his phone. If the customer is not in possession of his handset, no one else will be able to use it once it has been barred."

With this new service, however, customers can be assured that if their phones are stolen, it cannot be used to make calls on the network, even if the SIM card is replaced. Another phase of the project, yet to be finalised, will ensure that once handsets are banned by other networks, they will be useless on the Digicel network.

C&WJ's action has come in response to requests from the government for mobile service providers to implement measures to help to alleviate the rampant mobile phone-theft activity plaguing the country.

The theft of cellular phones has long been an issue for the police, who have admitted that it is a growing crime. Superintendent Anthony Morris, head of the St Andrew North Police Division, told THE STAR, "We have a lot of those cases. Cellphones are one of the things that they [robbers] go for. We have a number of robberies in the division and phones are often part of the robberies. Even in housebreaking, they tend to take phones."

He explained that phones are often targeted because "they're small, easily disposable and in most cases, they're expensive. We really see a lot of cellphone robberies."