The Telecom Regulatory Authority of  India (TRAI) chairman JS Sarma has said that regulator is working on the mechanism on blocking IMEI of lost and stolen mobile handsets and will soon issue the guidelines on the issue.

He assured that this could possibly be done before the end of October."I think we should be able to do it in other 15 to 20 days," he said.

It may be recalled that TRAI has been looking into the issue for almost seven years. The authority has also received comments from various stakeholders on technology and measures that can be made for handling issues related to lost mobile phones.

"Before the end of October, we will issue comprehensive guideline on grievances redressal mechanism and in that again we are building what is called telecom consumer grievance monitoring system where TRAI would be able to track complaint of consumers," Sarma said.

"We in TRAI cannot directly handle complaints of consumer but it is our task that systems are put in place and it is task of service provider to ensure that complaints are actually taken up in-time," Sarma said.

Early this year, TRAI was able to implement mobile number portability regulation which allows user to change their operators without changing their existing number.

"Till date around 20 million subscribers have request for MNP and 15 to 16 million subscribers have changed their operators. There are more than 100 thousand porting request being made every day," Sarma said.