The Honduran telecoms regulator Conatel has announced it will begin blocking the signals from mobile phones that have been reported as stolen, reports BNamericas citing a report on the website of local radio station Uni³n Radio. Conatel president Rassel Tom© confirmed that the watchdog had the technical wherewithal to block numbers, allowing it to ‘verify that neither of the two mobile operators Tigo and Claro, nor any other company, can connect stolen units’, the report said. The government is concerned over the high levels of crime related to mobile phone theft. In 2006 alone, around 50 people have been killed in such related incidents, leaving the regulator little option but to take drastic measures to combat the problem.

According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms database, the mobile market in Honduras is home to just two active operators — Tigo (formerly Celtel Honduras), operated by Millicom International Cellular, and Sercom, which is backed by Mexico’s Am©rica M³vil and trades as Al³ — although a third licence was granted to state incumbent Hondutel, to compensate it for losing its international long-distance monopoly in December 2005. Tigo launched analogue AMPS services in 1996 but only saw its subscriber base start to grow significantly after it began upgrading its infrastructure with CDMA technology in 2000. In November 2003 Sercom entered the fray when it secured a GSM licence in the 1800MHz band.

Source-  telegeography  Wireless Mobile Telecom