Big Four US carriers vow to switch off stolen smartphones
Operators team up with FCC to draw up stolen smartmobe blacklist

In order to combat rising cases of phone theft, America's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is planning to create a national database of stolen smartphones with the goal of ensuring that the mobes never work again.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/10/fcc_us_police_database_phone_theft/

I was wondering what other people thought of this article. I remember while I was on Vodafone many moons ago after having my phone stolen, and finding out that Vodafone (and I assume Telecom, and 2 Degrees) were more than happy to have someone else use my stolen phone on their network. 

From memory they wouldn't even let me know who was now using MY mobile on their network. Gotta love the Privacy act. I was ropeable :-) 

Drove me nuts... And it looks like it have driven others crazy as well, as the top carriers in the USA are forming a stolen list (initially one per network, then in the future merging these to one list.) of phones which will never be allowed back on their network.

This would overnight stop most mobile phone thefts, the article talks about 1 in 3 robberies are now mobile phones.