2 to 3 weeks for telecom equipment clearance

NEW DELHI, INDIA: The government is likely to accept recommendations made by Indian Institute of Science (IISc) for formulating a safeguard norm with regard to the issue of safety of imported telecom equipment.

The recommendations for the safeguard norm, which is expected in two to three weeks, suggest that Indian operators engage third party testing certification agencies based in the US, Germany, Israel and Canada, to test their telecom equipment.

“IISc has given its suggestion which is very likely to form basis for safeguard policy. We don’t have full fledged testing capacity in place and till we acquire that capability, we will have to work by adopting safeguard measures,” said a senior official from the Department of Telecom in an interaction with CIOL.

He mentioned that DoT had been asked to prepare a draft on the safeguard issues and discuss it with operators.

“Nothing has been finalized yet. We have been asked to prepare a draft and discuss it with operators. We have time of two to three weeks for putting safeguard policy in place. If everything goes on in-time then we will be doing it before the stipulated time frame,” said the official.

As per the information available with CIOL, IISc has recommended to check equipment falling in three categories namely RF and wireless, all IT and IP dominated equipments, and optical network elements and SIM that are issued by operators.

The recommendations have also asked for access to source code of software being used in equipments.

According to sources in DoT, the document has acknowledged the domination of Chinese companies in hardware space but has expressed doubts on the origin of components used in the equipment. The document, as per sources, also states that equipment coming from United States as well as other countries is also under scrutiny because they rely on components made in other countries.

Therefore there is question on the origin of components being used in equipment of other countries as well.

The media has already reported that India has agreed to allow import of Chinese telecom gear certified by international security audit firms.