TeleClick reports that the United Kingdom's top five wireless carriers have "pledged to fight mobile phone theft by disabling all handsets reported stolen within 48 hours."

"Mobile operators are now answerable, and will get named and shamed by us if they fail to stick to the charter,"

says Jack Wraith, Chairman of the Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum (MICAF), which includes Vodafone, Orange, O2, T-Mobile and 3.

The British government is supporting the plan with a pledge of £1.3 million towards the creation of a national phone crime unit. "I believe the public should be free to carry valuable items, such as mobile phones and MP3 players, on the streets without fear of becoming a target for robbers," says British Home Secretary John Reid.

"Police figures suggest that the increase in mobile phone use among young people has contributed to an increase in the number of muggings and street robberies over the past few years," the TeleClick article states. "Authorities are hoping that the new MICAF agreement will take away a lot of the incentive for this sort of crime."

The Inquirer's Tony Dennis explains that MICAF will make use of an existing database of stolen phone numbers which is tied to the handset's unique IMEI number.

But Dennis says this effort doesn't go far enough. "The reality is that a large number of stolen phones are sent abroad," he writes. "What is really needed, for example, is for the British database to be linked with networks operating in second tier countries such as Romania and nigeria, where many of these phones end up."