The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has finally decided to allow remote access, a long-standing demand of international telecom players like AT&T, British Telecom, France Telecom, Cable & Wireless and Verizon. Remote access will enable these players to monitor the services they provide to their corporate clients in India from locations outside the country. The global carriers will also be allowed to transfer client information to locations outside India.
Currently, only limited remote access is allowed and that too, from certain international locations which have to be approved by the home ministry and intelligence agencies. Moreover, long distance access providers for operators such as Bharti Airtel, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices Limited are debarred from transferring any accounting information of users (except when on roaming) outside India. Details of infrastructure and network diagrams are also prohibited from being transferred outside the country under any circumstances.
Foreign carriers, represented by the Association of Competitive Telecom Operators (ACTO), have for some time been demanding that they be allowed to transfer user information of their enterprise clients to locations outside India. In fact, ACTO had asked that the restrictions on remote access for global service providers (international long distance operators providing enterprise data services to global customers) be treated separately from the current restrictions for mobile and landline operators in India.
According to ACTO, the clause relating to user information (not to be transferred abroad) was incorporated for access services. It was not really applicable to international long distance operators, which basically provide global enterprise data services, where the disclosure of user information is required for provisioning as well as billing of the circuit.
The DoT internal note allowing remote access states that in the department’s opinion, there is no prohibition: “User information can be sent to global network operation control centres located outside India, the restrictions imposed by Press Note 3 (2007) is to be exempted for providing global data services.
However, DoT gave its clearance to ACTO only on the assurance that global carriers will furnish the mirror images of remote access information to security agencies in India. Besides, members have to maintain an audit trail of remote access activities for six months, in line with existing regulations.
Towards this end, DoT and ACTO have proposed to constitute a group that will include representatives from the Intelligence Bureau to formulate the uniform technical trail for remote access as prescribed in Press Note 3.
