India plans CMS to monitor communications

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology Gurudas Kamat said that the Government is planning to set up a centralized system to monitor communications on mobile phones, landlines and the Internet in the country.

Centralized Monitoring System (CMS) is envisaged to be implemented by DOT to strengthen the security environment in the country. With the implementation of CMS following problems which are inherent in the present system will be overcome.

In reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, the minister said in the existing system secrecy can be easily compromised due to manual intervention at many stages while in CMS these functions will be performed on secured electronic link and there will be minimum manual intervention.

Pilot project of CMS is likely to be started by June, 2010 subject to clearance by Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, the minister added.

In reply to another question, the minister said said that spectrum allocated to the new licensees not being used by existing operators.

“The licencees, who have been allotted initial spectrum as per the conditions of Universal Access Service License (UASL) and while planning their network, have reported that existing operators are using their spectrum. An independent monitoring exercise was conducted by the Communications and Information Technology Ministry and the results do not reveal such usage,” he told Rajya Sabha today.

Kamat also informed parliament that all the District Level Telephone Advisory Committees (TACs) in Kerala have been constituted for a period of two years (from 01.10.2009 to 30.09.2011).