Govt beefs up firewall against foreign malware, spywares
By Sanjay Singh
New Delhi, June 28: Amid repeated malware attacks on AIIMS servers, the government has fast-paced placing impregnable firewall to critical data assets. While India rapidly moves towards digitization across all its services and deliveries at the base level pan India, but with India importing excessively importing over 80 per cent of its telecom equipment largely from China and other western vendors, the government wants to build up a safe and protective firewall of its telecom infrastructure, against outside attacks of malware and spywares.
In a bid to ensure full-proof and secured telecom infrastructure, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has extended the implementation timeline for the Mandatory Testing and Certification of Telecommunication Equipment (MTCTE) by six months. Indian telecom operators have also welcomed the decision of the Telecommunication Engineering Centre (TEC).
The upgraded secured infrastructure is also crucial for the rollout of 5G services which will require massive laying of optical fibre and a dense network of mobile towers.
India’s current telecom gear imports is anywhere around one lakh crore and the move is also aimed at exploring opportunities for Indian telecom gear makers. India currently has over 836 million internet subscribers with highest average data usage in the world.
At the same time, India’s data traffic grew by 31 per cent in 2021, with mobile data approaching 17 giga bytes (GB) per user per month. In the next five years, India is expected to expand broadband access to over 80 per cent of Indians with average usage of 40 GB per month.
India’s digital consumer market is one of the fastest growing and world’s largest as well. India’s digital economy has gone up twice the rate of its economy and its 5G expansion is on its way to ring US$1 trillion by 2025-26.
The 12 products that would go through minute testing of equipment include SIM, base station and repeater for cellular networks, optical fibre cable, satellite communication equipment, mobile radio trunking system, optical fibre-single mode. DOT has also extended the date of mandatory certification of 32 products covered under MTCTE phases 3 and 4, by three months to October 1, 2023. The 32 products include equipment operating in 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz band, IoT Gateway, signalling gateway, tracking device, media gateway, smart electric meter, equipment identity register session, border controller and serving mobile location centre.
The extensions would help the industry which has been facing significant challenges in executing telecom infra expansions due to lack of testing labs, and defined timelines for testing procedures. These delays could impact further 5G rollout pan India.
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