NEW DELHI: A telecom department panel has recommended tightening of norms for remote access, the provision to monitor data and voice traffic on cellular networks from remote locations across the globe. The panel has said that all players must create an on-line mirror image and audit trail of the remote access information.
The panel has also said that telecom service providers must install a local remote access server in India and store all information related to this facility locally.
The move will impact foreign carriers in India — AT&T, BT, France Telecom, Verizon and Cable & Wireless among others.
The panel further said that all remote access (RA) requests given from foreign locations on Indian network elements should be stored directly at the Indian RA storage server. "Telecom service provider should ensure the capability to restrict remote access to India network as and when directed by licensor," the panel's recommendations add.
The move will impact foreign carriers in India — AT&T, BT, France Telecom, Verizon and Cable & Wireless among others.
The panel further said that all remote access (RA) requests given from foreign locations on Indian network elements should be stored directly at the Indian RA storage server. "Telecom service provider should ensure the capability to restrict remote access to India network as and when directed by licensor," the panel's recommendations add.
In 2009, India had agreed to the demand by global carriers that they be allowed to transfer user information of their clients to locations outside the country.
Current rules allow RA from certain international locations that are approved by the home ministry and intelligence agencies. But domestic operators and access service providers, which are the long-distance arms of telcos such as Bharti, RCOM, BSNL and Tatas, are barred from transferring any accounting information of users (except roaming) outside India. Details of infrastructure and network diagrams are also barred from being transferred outside India.
The Association of Competitive Telecom Operators (ACTO), which represents these foreign carriers in India, has opposed any revision in existing RA norms and said that India should not impose a common solution across all networks. "Global operators may directly fetch the logs from network elements or from central logging servers (located outside) India. In any event, the details of the implementation may vary as long as the desired objected is met," ACTO said in its communication to the DoT.
The industry lobby has also said that global operators will set up functional domestic servers that would capture RA information on real-time basis within a year. At the same time, it has also pointed out that its member companies, which operate in more than 200 countries, had not received any such 'request pertaining to RA'. It also added that this was the first time that global carriers were implementing such an in-country set-up.
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