The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has set end-August as the timeline to chalk out the norms for intercepting and monitoring calls and messages.
For this purpose, DoT is planning to establish a centralised monitoring system and collect, store and analyse such information.
Prior to this, DoT had suggested amending the existing unified access service and the cellular mobile telephone service (CMS) licences. DoT planned to make it mandatory for operators to provide connectivity up to the nearest point of presence of the CMS? MPLS network at their own expense. This was to be achieved through dark optic fibre connectivity with built-in redundancy.
Until telecom operators establish the optic fibre network, they will be required to provide 10 Mbps connectivity, which can be upgraded to 45 Mbps or higher, as specified by the government.
These measures are in line with the government?s plan to establish a centralised monitoring system in 10 circles by end-2013. This system is expected to facilitate lawful interception of mobile numbers without manual intervention from telecom operators.
Currently, it is believed that the Centre for Development of Telematics has already installed two servers, one at Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited and the other at Telecommunications Consultants India Limited under the pilot project.
