DoT tightens telecom equipment procurement

NEW DELHI, INDIA: The Department of Telecom (DoT) unveiled a new security framework today. The new framework is expected to give a nightmare for the telecom equipment vendors as well as operators. It said that the telcos can only import the certified equipment and will attract a maximum penalty of Rs 50 crore for security breach on network.

The new guidelines call cellular companies to appoint Indians as CTOs and CIOs for handling monitoring and interception functionalities for mobile networks. The government thinks that malicious software in imported equipment could pose security threat to the nation. The new mandate also abolished the existing clauses like the ones that mandate foreign equipment companies to put their software in the equivalent of a sealed envelope and submit it to the government.

Speaking to CIOL over phone, J Gopal, advisor (technology) at DoT said that national security has become a matter of paramount importance and the new framework is available now. Operators can only import the equipment under certification either from the international or Indian standards.

The service operators like Bharti Airtel, Reliance Vodafone, Idea and BSNL have to procure only tested equipment that have an approval of the Telecommunication Engineering Centre (TEC) from the vendors that include Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, ZTE, Huawei, and Nokia Siemens.

It may be noted that these new norms have come in the wake of government's thrust to promote domestic manufacturing of telecom equipment in India.