China Telecom, a Chinese state-owned telecommunications company, has recently released a whitepaper on a blockchain smartphone in the 5G era at the Smart China Expo 2019.

The white paper describes a blockchain application ecosystem that aims to solve major issues in operating mobile networks including phone fraud, harassment, loss and crimes related to identity theft, by leveraging blockchain technology.

As an example, its solution to theft and loss is to create a blacklist associated with trusted IMEIs (International Mobile Equipment Identity) using distributed ledger technology and encrypt it through blockchain. When a mobile device gets blacklisted, carriers, smartphone suppliers and end users can immediately receive the information and disable the stolen device through blockchain, which makes it impossible for criminals to use the stolen device with a new SIM card, according to the whitepaper.

If customers find their stolen smartphone or realize it was just misplaced, they can ask network operators to remove the device from the blacklist. This idea allows carriers, phone makers and end users to identify and disable stolen devices anywhere.

Prior to China Telecom’s 5g blockchain phone, there have already been several phones featured by blockchain and crypto. However, most of them have not yet been widely available, and the majority of blockchain phone manufacturers are using blockchain to speculate on market hotspots rather than to bring real-world use of the technology to the industry, China Telecom stated.

In such a context, the company believes the combination of two technologies of today – blockchain and 5G could form a more secure ecosystem and a value transmission network for smartphones.