The Hindu Business Line : BSNL-Reliance Info spat has a security angle too

IS the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd-Reliance Infocomm issue merely a bilateral one between the two parties to be settled by themselves, or is it a matter to be pursued by the Department of Telecommunications or other authorities?

Officials, both at BSNL and across the telecom industry, hold differing views. One senior official with one of the BSNL circles which had alleged that Reliance Infocomm was passing off international calls as originating from India itself said: "It is a breach of agreement between them and us."

According to him, since the means of dealing with the problem (namely, disconnecting Reliance's points of interconnect) were in BSNL's hands, and BSNL would also stand to lose less than Reliance Infocomm should the disconnections actually be carried out, it having the larger network of the two, the matter can be settled between the two parties.

However, not everyone at BSNL agrees with him. Senior officials at some of the other circles of BSNL issue feel it is not just a question of BSNL standing to lose revenues, but that the issue is one of security and of violation of license conditions as well.

"Very often law-enforcing agencies want to trace calls. One should see how they persist with us when they want to track down a call. Now, if a call originating from elsewhere showed up as coming from India itself, it would remain untraceable, and law enforcing agencies are not going to like that," said a senior official with a BSNL circle who feels that either the Department of Telecommunications or some other authority ought to pursue the matter more seriously.

Other telecom officials who hold the `bilateral issue' point of view, feel that when voice over Internet protocol telephony (VoIP telephony) is allowed in ILD (provided it is not through a PSTN line), calls will be untraceable anyway, and it would be irrelevant to bring in a security angle to the issue. And as such, it would end up being a bilateral issue between BSNL and Reliance Infocomm.

But BSNL officials want the security angle to be examined too. They point attention to an August news release of this year from the Ministry of Telecommunications: "With a view to curbing the menace of grey Internet telephony market and to check flourishing of illegal telephone exchanges in the country, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has decided to recover the revenue losses by imposing penalty against Internet Service Providers (ISPs) whose Internet leased lines were found being misused."

Reliance Infocomm's case is different from the above one, pointed out a BSNL official. "However, one would note that the DoT is imposing its own penalty and not asking the ILD operators who are the wronged party to settle the issue with the ISPs. So why should ours be only a bilateral issue?"

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BSNL-Reliance Info spat has a security angle too