The government plans to test and certify the hardware and software of all foreign telecom companies and has initiated the process with Huawei.
Kapil Sibal, Minister of Communications and IT said the decision was taken because 70-80 per cent of telecom equipment is imported and has been deployed largely by private operators.
To test telecom hardware, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore was to establish a lab at an estimated cost of Rs 0.60 billion, of which Rs 0.50 billion would be funded by the government.
IISc had simultaneously approached several vendors, including Cisco, Juniper and Huawei from the US, Europe and Asia to provide details of their telecom equipment, such as design document and internal architecture.
Sibal said that Huawei had responded before other vendors and hence, the requisite MoU was signed on June 15 between IISC and Huawei. He added that all foreign vendors will be required to share their architecture for the country to develop its own security protocol.
In case of any security breach, the operators and vendors would be held responsible and their licences may be cancelled or a heavy penalty will be imposed.
