 The tradeoff is that the phone hardware cannot be easily identified.This tradeoff was removed in 2008 by the ability to specify MEID or EUIMID in OTASP signaling and in 2009 by the addition of these options to the CDMA air interface StatusRequest message.The term MEID_ME is used to distinguish the hardware identity of the phone from the MEID protocol element that may be the EUIMID.