Telecom equipment makers, including the Chinese, will be able to import gear without having to share source codes or signing an agreement with the operators. For, the Government has now decided to do away with the earlier announced security norms for importing telecom gear which had imposed stringent measures on the vendors. This comes as huge relief to companies such as Nokia Siemens and Ericsson as they had expressed their inability to comply with these rules.

At a recent meeting between top officials from the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Department of Telecom, it was decided that the existing rules will be replaced by a fresh set of guidelines whereby the onus of keeping telecom networks secure would be put on the operators instead of the vendors.

Under the new rules operators will be asked to ensure that only Indian citizens are hired for key operational and maintenance activities. They will also have to get their network certified through a third party agency. In case spyware or malware is found on the operator's network, the DoT will impose a penalty. But the penalty amount will be decided on a case to case basis. Under the current norms operators have to pay 100 per cent of the contract order as penalty which runs into billions of dollars.

Last year, the Government had announced a set of strict norms for importing telecom gear after security agencies expressed concerns that there could spyware embedded into the equipment which could allow agencies in unfriendly countries to snoop into Indian communication networks. The concerns were initially directed towards Chinese suppliers including Huawei and ZTE but later the rules were applied to all the vendors. This rule made it mandatory for vendors to submit source codes to the DoT in an Escrow account. Vendors including Ericsson, and Nokia Siemens had refused to share the codes on grounds that it was tantamount to giving away IPR secrets.

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