For the last several months, the Indian government had imposed restrictions on imported Chinese telecom equipment, due to security concerns. Indian security agencies have long worried that installing Chinese telecom equipment in Indian networks may lead to security breaches, asserting there may be a chance for foreign government monitoring of domestic communications via spyware.
However due to relentless pressure from telecom providers and the implementation of 3G and 3.5G networks, the government has lifted some of the restrictions temporarily. Telecom gear vendors have also met with Indian government officials recently to discuss network security. The recent deals among Tata Teleservices Ltd. , China's Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. , Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd., (BSNL), and ZTE Corp. seem to indicate thawing of relations between India and China on the telecom equipment front.
Tata Teleservices has signed a deal with Huawei to implement a rapid rollout in five regions, enabling the Indian telecom company to offer customers multimedia voice and data services and other 3G services, which include the installation of thousands of Huawei’s LTE-ready radios. Growing commerce in telecom equipment between the regional rivals has prompted some observers to conclude that the de facto ban on Chinese telecom equipment has been lifted.
Meanwhile ZTE announced sales in India rose about 50 percent to $1.5 billion from the previous year. Both Huawei and ZTE have major R&D facilities in India, and they are expanding. Still, concerns persist about the future relationship between the two countries in the area of telecommunications.
The Indian government has insisted that all equipment vendors must transfer technology to Indian manufacturers within three years of selling equipment or services in India. It also requires inspection of manufacturing centers anywhere in the world. India's Department of Telecommunications has asked service providers to ensure that their networks are operated and maintained only by Indian engineers.
Earlier this year, Huawei executives said they had not received any "official guidance from the Indian government" about restrictions on telecommunications equipment made in China. "Nevertheless, we have read media reports and are deeply concerned and surprised to know about this development." The Chinese company added that its Indian operation "is currently evaluating and understanding the latest development and seeking clarifications from the concerned authorities."
According to market researcher Voice and Data, the Indian telecom equipment market is worth about $28.8 billion annually. Nokia is the market leader with sales of over $3 billion, followed by Huawei with nearly $2.5 billion. The Indian government is not only concerned about the equipment market, though. It is also planning to bring search and software companies like Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) under its security umbrella by asking the search giant to submit periodic reports. And it is pressing BlackBerry (Nasdaq: RIMM; Toronto: RIM) to set up an Indian datacenter so the government could monitor encrypted information on customers' BlackBerry handsets. The government also wants to ensure the security of Skype voice-over-IP services.
In order to boost manufacturing of indigenous equipment, the government may extend preferential status to "Made in India" products in its new telecom policy. Broader telecom policy will include measures appropriate to encourage domestic telecom manufacturing. Some aspects of this have been considered by the expert committee of secretaries, and preferential status for domestic manufacturers is one of them. The Department of Telecom meanwhile is waiting for recommendations from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on manufacturing and expects to receive these by April. The push for preferential treatment for "Made in India" products is part of the Government's agenda to reduce the widening trade deficit created by imports.
Citing the rising import bill of IT and telecom products, a task force has recommended that the government develop an ecosystem for boosting indigenous manufacturing. Estimates show that India's demand for electronics products, including telecom equipment, will be $400 billion by 2020. At the existing rate of growth, the domestic production of electronics hardware is likely to grow to only $104 billion by 2020, creating a supply-and-demand gap of $296 billion, which would have to be met through imports.
Well, the Chinese gvmnt has a great amount of influence over those companies (ZTE, Huawei, etc) and they have been accused of using that influence to get them to release user-specific info.
The US Gvmnt is very scared of that, of course.
Srpint being "owned" by one of them might mean that the Chinese Gvmnt could do the same. And Sprint does a LOT of work for the USG.
Ibeno, all such things may happens when competition becomes tighter. Normally Chinese companies are looking others with a different eye. Since both countries are technologically rivals and keen to know the internal happenings of others, this is one of the advance ways of spying. Regularly it will monitor the statics and send periodic reports to the intentor.
while considering the national security, especially after reports of global network of Chinese hackers breaking into sensitive installations worldwide, includes the military and telecom networks. It further cites recent UK reports that have raised concerns over importing a Chinese telecom major’s equipment for use in Britain’s telecom network, which may lead to espionage or a shut down during a war. Govt. hopes this will ward off the rising threat of espionage into strategic segments and more over government is also concerned about future availability of foreign chip technologies.
There's never been a case in the past decade of these companies of ever committing any crime. It is interesting that Indian companies like Tata's IT group have began to partner with these Chinese companies to get contracts in other countries so there has been a growing mutual benefit.
I've read a lot of articles about how the Chinese telecom vendors are not trust-worthy but what can companies do? Huawei, ZTE and others are becoming the biggest telecom vendors, can a company afford to skip on their products and services?
You are actually completely free to put in any security you want... on two conditions:
1. The 'magic' box MUST bridge the internet to your private network at a position where it can see the internal user traffic and can be accessed by the public security department.
2. You cannot add in a sandbox/protection to prevent the device from performing the function it was intended for.(see linked article)
You can get a fairly shrewed Idea from the legal analysis here:
Read around about article 13, I have the full chinese article on another computer system, along with some pictures of the equipment and a list of 'authorized' equipment suppliers.
If it were my choice I would not allow any sort of this supplied telecom infrastructure anywhere near a counties digital backbone, especially as this level of equipment usually contains multiple FPGA's, and with the FPGA you CANNOT analyze its functionality or de-cript the programming functions. It is why the FPGA device is so often used in Military applications or places where high security protection of designs are required, even with the binary file of an FPGA you cannot de-compile it into any sort of meaningful structure to allow analysis, basically it is the original Black-box, even more of a problem , is that the FPGA device is completely re-programable over any communication medium it may implement, as such its functionality can be re-targeted at any time with very little chance of detection.
Stochastic excursion, you are right. They may always open the option for data mining and monitoring, more over many of times government is not much bothered about such thinks because of lack of knowledge, non sensitivity and ignorance. But when it comes to national security and military forefront, government is much concerned, especially after wiki leaks incidents. China has always an eye over the happenings and developments in neighborhood countries, especially over India due to various reasons.
Dave, many times vendors provides choices for security measurements. But these Chinese equipments are coming with inbuilt dynamic data collection & monitoring software, irrespective of any safe guard measurements from the user side. More over the vendors are putting some restrictions for installing user software as a part of warranty. Since most of the telecom equipments are online in 24x7, they can tap the traffic data’s at any point of time through some simple codes. As of now government have a plan to restrict or limit the use of Chinese equipments.
Reports suggest China keeps its options open when it comes to data harvesting from networks it is interested in monitoring. The unauthorized access into Google's networks during that company's stay in China could not explicitly be declared as government policy, and so was surreptitious. OTOH as long as the access is official policy they are free to be heavy-handed about it.
Certain non-sensitive traffic the Indian government probably doesn't mind the Chinese snooping into. Indeed like some countries they may even pay China for the intelligence they've collected on their own people.
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