Context: The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has amended the telecom licenses to mandate the use of equipment only from trusted sources from June 15, 2021. This move is widely believed to be India’s first formal step towards keeping Chinese suppliers out of India's future telecom expansion, including 5G technology roll outs. In this episode we will discuss and analyse all aspects of this issue.
Key Highlights

• The government will declare a list of trusted sources and trusted products for installation in the country's telecom network.
• Telcos can use telecom products only from trusted sources in its network and must take permission from the designated authority if they plan to upgrade their existing network using telecom equipment that has not been designated as a trusted product.
• The directive, however, does not envisage mandatory replacement of the existing equipment already inducted in the network of telecom operators and it will also not affect annual maintenance contracts or updates to existing equipment already inducted in the network as on date of effect of the directive.
• It will help in controlling installation of network equipment from China and other non-friendly countries.

Implications of the move

• The move could potentially make it more difficult for Chinese telecom equipment vendors like Huawei and ZTE to supply equipment to Indian telecom players in the future.
• Both Huawei and ZTE have been under global scrutiny for allegedly installing ‘backdoor’ or ‘trapdoor’ vulnerabilities and spying for the Chinese government and have been banned by several countries.
• The telecom companies will not be able to use equipment from non-trusted sources for the setting up or expanding of network to utilise the 4G spectrum that they bought in the recently concluded spectrum auctions.

Other Steps in Same Direction

National Security Directive

• In December last year, Cabinet Committee on Security had approved setting up of a new National Security Directive on the telecommunication sector with an intent to classify telecom products and their sources under the ‘trusted’ and ‘non-trusted’ categories.
• The National Cyber Security Coordinator has been made the designated authority for deciding on the list of trusted and non-trusted telecom equipment sources and products.
•  its decisions will be made based on approval of a committee headed by the deputy National Security Advisor (NSA).
• Apart from the deputy NSA, the expert committee will have members from other departments and ministries, and independent experts as well as two members from the industry.

Information Security Audit

• In July 2020, the Centre had asked all telecom operators to undertake an ‘information security audit’ of their networks.
• The objective of the audit was to specifically check for any ‘backdoor’ or ‘trapdoor’ vulnerabilities in the telecom networks, which can be exploited to extract information and pass on illegally to agencies around the world.
• A ‘backdoor’ or a ‘trap door’ is a bug installed in the telecom hardware that allows companies to listen in or collect data being shared on the network.