Telecom related issues to be resolved by October: Kapil Sibal

01 Jul 2011 Evaluate
The 14-player telecom industry is waiting for several issues to be sorted out, including spectrum allocation, licensing , tariffs, pricing, spectrum sharing and trading, rollout obligations and mergers and acquisitions norms. The New Telecom Policy 2011, which is likely to bring more clarity in the Indian telecom industry is expected to come out before the year-end. Communication Minister Kapil Sibal said, India will resolve all pending issues related to the telecom sector by October and also develop its own telecom security protocols and equipment testing facility.

Telecom ministry also clarified that the government is not collaborating with Chinese telecom gear maker Huawei, for creating facility that will test all imported mobile networks into India. Telecom Minister said, 'We are not collaborating with any company to set up our testing laboratory. IISc has already set up the same as part of old pilot project, wherein all the equipment and software is theirs.'

Telecom minister said 'The proposed centre would formulate standards and policies, provide facilities for testing, validation and security certification for various network elements to ensure networks are secure and less vulnerable to internal and external threats”. On June 15, a Memorandum of understanding was signed between Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore and Huawei, to provide documentation, expertise, methods and standards for studying telecom equipment.

Kapil Sibal said the government was keen to create the testing facility since private service providers had deployed 70-80% of imported telecom equipment. Minister further added that IISc had approached several vendors including US-based Cisco, Juniper and Avaya to share internal details of their telecom equipment like detailed design document and internal architecture, critical for testing. The Chinese gear maker Huawei was earlier disqualified from many tenders of BSNL, due to security concerns, even though the Chinese firm was the lowest bidder.

Last year, country’s interior ministry had rejected to give telecom equipment contacts to Chinese firms due to fear as these companies have capabilities of installing spyware and malware that could monitor voice and data traffic and disable networks. The department of telecom is waiting for a response of TRAI on recommended cancellation of mobile permits, Department of telecom asked TRAI why it recommended cancellation of 69 licenses, it has recommended cancellation of only 15 mobile permits.

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