Islamabad: The implementation of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA)’s Device Identification, Registration, and Blocking System (DIRBS) in 2019 has resulted in a significant increase in the legal import of mobile devices and the establishment of over 33 local assembly plants of mobile devices in Pakistan.
These plants have produced over 25 million mobile devices, including 4G smartphones since the implementation of the System.
With the successful execution of DIRBS, the local assembly industry has evolved from infancy to a well-growing stage, with significant growth seen in the local assembly of smartphones. In 2019, only 119,639 smartphones were assembled locally, whereas in 2020, the number of such devices grew to 2.1 million. By the end of 2021, 1.21 million smartphones have so far been assembled in Pakistan.
In the light of this tremendous impact of DIRBS, the Government of Pakistan has introduced a comprehensive Mobile Manufacturing Policy to encourage and attract manufacturers to Pakistan and establish their plants. PTA has issued Mobile Device Manufacturing (MDM) Regulations and has started receiving mobile device manufacturing applications. This initiative will help create more jobs in this technical sector, as well as enable consumers to buy locally manufactured mobile devices.
Pakistan has the distinction of implementing the world’s first open-source, full-fledged DIRBS. This system has the ability to identify all IMEIs latched on Pakistan’s mobile networks and to categorise them based on their compliant status.
