DoT centre to take up telecom equipment certification project

The project to set up a centre for certifying telecom equipment will now be taken up by the Department of Telecom(DoT), as telecom vendors have refused to share manufacturing details with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore.

The centre would be set up under DoT, the telecom department said, and 23 staff members would be immediately required, followed by 69 after two years and 100 after four years. The aim of the centre was to certify that imported telecom equipment did not have any bugging mechanism.

Though the prestigious IISc had done some initial work, it was unable to proceed because vendors were not ready to share the design details of the equipment, as it is an academic institute, according to an official note. The project that would help telecom service providers in inducting only “safe to connect” telecom network equipment will now be executed by the Department of Telecom (DoT), the note said.

After reports some foreign telecom firms were placing bugging devices in imported equipment, the government had decided to set up a telecom testing and security certification centre.

The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had already sanctioned an amount of Rs 50 crore for the centre which will be responsible for development of processors, systems, attack prevention tools, security standards and certification of security testing.

The expenditure for the manpower requirements will be met from the Rs 50 crore provided for the project during first two to three years and later the centre would start generating its own revenue through fee for laboratory certification and charges for security testing of equipment, it added.