Logo of Sanchar Saathi app
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) on Monday (December 1, 2025) ordered smartphone manufacturers to pre-install the Sanchar Saathi app on new devices sold from March 2026, and to make sure “that [the app’s] functionalities are not disabled or restricted”. The Hindu has viewed a copy of the directions. The Sanchar Saathi app will be used to “verify authenticity of IMEIs used in mobile devices,” the order said. It is unclear if the app will have access to the IMEI number of devices it is pre-installed on, or if users will have to input the hardware identifier on their own.
In a statement, the DoT said the move was meant to “safeguard the citizens from buying the non-genuine handsets, enabling easy reporting of suspected misuse of telecom resources and to increase effectiveness of the Sanchar Saathi initiative”. The Sanchar Saathi app, first introduced as a portal in 2023, has been used to report scam calls, enable users to identify SIM cards registered in their name, and remotely disable phones after they are stolen.
Third order
This is the third order the DoT has sent after the notification of the Telecom Cyber Security Rules, 2024, which were amended earlier this year with provisions on regulating nearly any service that uses mobile numbers. On Friday, the government ordered messaging platforms to perform “SIM binding,” restricting apps like WhatsApp to devices containing the SIM card used to sign up for the service. Friday’s order also required WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram and other platforms like it to log users out of web-based interfaces every six hours.
Monday’s (December 1, 2025) directions, which one industry source said was issued without any consultation (similar to Friday’s missive to the messaging platforms), came just a few days after another order to social media platforms, which were ordered to integrate the “Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI)” into their systems. The FRI is a risk score for phone numbers that banks have flagged as linked to fraud; a similar Mobile Number Revocation List (MNRL) has also been ordered by the DoT to be integrated into social media platforms, with a requirement to “deactivate these accounts immediately”.
The “DoT’s SIM‑binding directions are essential to plug a concrete security gap that cybercriminals are exploiting to run large‑scale, often cross‑border, digital frauds,” the DoT said in a statement on Monday. “Accounts on instant messaging and calling apps continue to work even after the associated SIM is removed, deactivated or moved abroad, enabling anonymous scams, remote “digital arrest” frauds and government‑impersonation calls using Indian numbers.”
Some smartphone makers have resisted government mandates to pre-install apps around the world. Apple, for instance, resisted the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)’s draft regulations to install a spam-reporting app, after the firm balked at the TRAI app’s permissions requirements, which included access to SMS messages and call logs. Apple came up with an “extension” later in 2017 that could be used within its SMS app, iMessage, without sharing user data in bulk with the app.
The Sanchar Saathi portal has been touted as a way to recover stolen or lost devices; the number of such recovered devices on a monthly basis hit 50,000 in October, the DoT said in a release last month.
Published – December 01, 2025 07:38 pm IST