Telecom operators will have to help set up government's Central Monitoring System

NEW DELHI: Telecom operators will soon have to share the burden with the central government in setting up the government’s surveillance capabilities under the Central Monitoring System (CMS). DoT has proposed an amendment to the existing telecom licences (the unified access service licence and the CMTS) under which it will become mandatory for a service provider to provide connectivity up to the nearest point of presence of Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) network of the CMS at its own cost in the form of dark optic fiber with redundancy.


Until the time a service provider is unable to provide the dark optic fiber connectivity, the provider will have to extend connectivity in the form of 10Mbps bandwidth upgradeable to 45 mbps or higher as conveyed by the government. The DoT will soon amend the condition 44.10 of the UASL and the condition 5.9 of the CMTS agreement to incorporate the clauses. From the point of MPLS onwards the burden of handling the flow of information will lie on the government.

Once in place, the CMS will allow security agencies to lawfully intercept mails, messages and conversations over telecom networks without the current requirement of manual intervention of service providers.