Govt to establish lab to test imported telecom gear

India has decided to conduct testing and certification of software and hardware of all foreign telecom companies—a move aimed at addressing security concerns expressed by certain quarters, communications minister Kapil Sibal said on Thursday.

India has decided to conduct testing and certification of software and hardware of all foreign telecom companies—a move aimed at addressing security concerns expressed by certain quarters, communications minister Kapil Sibal said on Thursday.

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“This decision had been taken due to the fact that in today’s multi operator/vendor environment, risk to security of networks and related services, possibilities of theft and misuse of database, leakage of secure and personal information passing through the networks have nowadays increased considerably due to factors like service denial attacks on the networks, possible presence of malwares and security bugs in the network elements,” Sibal said.

The process of testing will begin with Chinese equipment vendor Huawei. More than 70% of telecom equipment are imported and have been deployed largely by the private service providers.

In order to perform 'Testing' on recent generation of telecom hardware being manufactured world over, the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore was entrusted with the job to set up a lab at an estimated cost of R60 crore of which Rs 50 crore would be funded by the government.

The IISc had simultaneously approached several vendors including Cisco, Juniper, Huawei among others. “Huawei responded proactively before other vendors and hence requisite MoU got signed on June 15 between the IISC and Huawei," Sibal said.