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Electronic Serial Number
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Electronic Serial Numbers (ESNs) were created by the FCC to uniquely identify mobile devices from the days of AMPS in the United States in the mid-1980s on. The administrative role was later taken over by TIA in 1997. ESNs are mainly used with AMPS and CDMA phones in the United States, compared to IMEI numbers used for GSM phones in Europe and elsewhere.
An ESN is 32 bits long. It consists of three fields, including an 8-bit manufacturer code, an 18-bit unique serial number, and 6 bits that are reserved for later use. Code 0x80 was reserved and now is used to represent pseudo ESNs (pESN).
As ESN is running out, new serial numbers named Mobile Equipment ID (MEID) are created. MEIDs are 56 bits long, which is the same length as with IMEI. MEID was created to be compatible with IMEI. The first 8 bits of MEID is a regional code. Numbers above 0xA0 will be assigned to CDMA phones. 0x99 is reserved for multimode phones and supports GSM and CDMA.
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