The GSMA is a trade association representing more than 700 GSM mobile phone operators across 217 territories and countries.

The magnitude of the problem of child sexual abuse content on the Internet—whose next frontier is mobile devices—was capsulized in a few statistics offered by Morten Karlsen Sorby, executive vice president of Telenor. He said that since Telenor, working with the Norwegian government, had set up a filter to block Web sites carrying child pornography, the number of blocked sites escalated from 274 in 2004 to more than 5,300 in 2008. "More than 26,000 hits have been registered," he said.

Sorby added that, according to Interpol databases, the current level of child pornography traffic in Europe totals some 200,000 images involving 20,000 children, 19 percent of whom are under the age of 3. The number of images of child sexual abuse increased by 75 percent from 2004 to 2006, according to the latest figures available. "Over 50 percent of the traffic was commercial," said Sorby.

Stating the issue bluntly, GSMA chairman Craig Ehrlich said, "The Internet is very useful to criminals. The amount of child sexual abuse content is increasing with the digital revolution."

To short-circuit this aspect of Internet content before it infects the mobile world, Ehrlich said, the GSMA intends to "obstruct the use of the mobile environment to sexual abuse content, to stem and reverse online sexual abuse content, and to protect customers from this content."