Talk:International Mobile Equipment Identity
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Personally, I've tried to investigate the characteristics of FAC and TAC from some data I have access to, and I can't reconcile what is being said about FAC with what really appears to happen. Either the statements made about FAC are wrong, or the FAC hides some interesting secrets about who makes phones and who puts their names on them.
It seems that many manufacturers, especially the major ones (Nokia, Nortel, Motorola, Ericsson/Sony, and Samsung) share FACs. Incidentally, many references state that FAC 30 is for Ericsson, but I could find no Ericsson branded phones of FAC 30 -- only Nokia and Panasonic.
The initial 2 digits of TAC that reportedly indicate the "country of approval" of the phone seem to be the same as E.164 country codes. For example, phones made by Alcatel (a French company) seem to all have TAC starting with 33 (France's calling code). Likewise, Siemens and Bosch have TAC starting with 49 (Germany's calling code). Etc. The wide majority of phones (at least in my data) have TAC starting with 01 (North America). The only irreconcilable oddity is Matsushita, Wavecom, and Handspring, who all have phones with TAC starting with 50. This could refer to any of a number of South American or Caribbean countries (or the Falkland Islands), but all seem unlikely places to develop mobile phones. Motorola has a number of models starting with 44 (Britain). Not surprisingly, 52 (Mexico) is not uncommon. 35 is also common to many manufacturers, and this code probably refers to Finland, though +35 is not a complete calling code.
[edit] IMEI Format
The Final Assembly Code (FAC) was used as part of the IMEI allocation until 01/01/2003. The FAC was used to identify the place of final assembly. The valid range is 00 - 99 and the FAC allocation is unique for each TAC, eg a FAC of "30" for one particular type of GSM phone may indicate a different place of final assembly for another type of phone from the same manufacturer. In practice, a FAC may be consistent for all types of phones from a particular manufacturer, eg "30" may indicate the same place of final assembly for a manufacturer, although this is not a requirement of the GSM Association's allocation procedures.
The first two digits of the TAC are the "Reporting Body Identifier". These digits indicate which organisation issued the IMEI. The GSM Association coordinates the allocation of the first 2 digits to Reporting Bodies. Valid Range 00 – 99.
Since April 2000, the first two digits have been "35" and these indicate that BABT allocated the IMEI. Before April 2000, BABT's identifier was "44"
[edit] Remade IMEI table
I remade the IMEI format table, should be clearer but feel free to rip it apart if you can think of a better way to do it - the previous method was pretty illegible. EAi 01:21, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
