India issues fresh security guidelines to protect Indian telecom services

Telecom Lead India: Due to security concerns, the India
government has given fresh guidelines to telecom service providers.

 

From 1st April, 2013 the network certification shall be
got done only from authorized and certified agencies/labs in India.

 

Further, as per licence condition, the licensee shall
employ only Resident, trained Indian Nationals as chief technical officer/s,
chief information security officer, nodal executives for handling interception
and monitoring cases and in-charge of GMSC, MSC, softswitch, central database
and system administrator/s.

 

The government said a reference has been received from a
Security agency expressing that Bharti Airtel, while rolling out the 4G
services is using TD-LTE technology, which has been developed by ZTE, a Chinese
company. Therefore, role of ZTE in managing the 4G network and adequacy of
training to local personnel of Airtel may be ascertained.


The information with regard to number of towns/cities in
the country where 4G network is managed by ZTE is being collected from the
Telecom Service Providers.



The Security agency has not given any suggestion. However, it has inquired
about the training given by ZTE to the local personnel to handle the 4G
network.

 

Milind Deora, minister of State in the Ministry of
Communication and Information Technology, said the Government has mandated that
licensee shall induct only those network elements into his telecom network,
which have been got tested as per relevant contemporary Indian or International
Security Standards from any international agency/labs of those standards until
31st March, 2013.

 

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