The Department of Telecommunication (DoT) of the Central government on Tuesday disconnected 51,260 suspected mobile connections issued by different Telecom operators in Odisha.
All those SIM cards were disconnected by their respective operators following an order by the DoT.
The information was shared by the Press Information Bureau (PIB).
As per reports, the DoT has conceptualized and implemented AI (Artificial Intelligence) based facial recognition tool called ASTR for Telecom SIM subscriber verification with a vision to analyze, identify and weed out fake/forged, non-bonafide mobile connections for curbing the menace of Cyber Crimes.
The ASTR analyzes the combined subscriber database of all the Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) and detects non-bonafide mobile connections. The system uses subscriber images and compares the same with other subscriber images and the output is generated in groups of similar images with different names of the same person.
A PIB press release said, “The system has identified 52,088 suspected mobile connections issued by different Telecom operators in Odisha. As per the directions of DoT Odisha, these suspected mobile connections were re-verified by the concerned telecom operators, and as a result 51,260 connections were found non-bonafide and disconnected.”
“Based on the analysis, a total of 2,417 no of Point of Sales (PoSs)/SIM sellers who were involved in such fraudulent activities have been blacklisted. Further Police complaints have been made for investigation and taking necessary action against the culprits. The steps taken as above will help to prevent the usage of such fake/forged mobile connections for various illegal activities including Cyber Crimes in Odisha,” PIB said.