The chinese telecom equipment companies seem to be thriving in India but can we trust them to manage our communications Network? reports Surbhi Chawla
The attack on 26/11 had well illustrated the security
lapses in the country and one had assumed that after an attack of this magnitude the Government of India would leave no stone unturned to avoid such mishaps in future. But it does not seem that way as numerous warning calls from Home Ministry in regards to security concern on using Chinese equipments in the telecommunications sector have fallen on deaf ears so far. In India there are currently more than 470 million wireless subscribers and as wireless communications are on an unsecured network, the security agencies have raised issues in regards to Chinese vendors like ZTE and Huawei supplying equipments to various telecom operators in the country.
According to Pankaj Kumar Jha, who looks after terrorism and security at IDSA, “Telecom is a very important sector as far as national security is concerned and lot of sensitivity is involved in regards to the same.” These days it is very easy to use the handsets for snooping purposes. There are numerous Chinese companies both branded and unbranded, which can be used for unlawful activities. To address the same DoT has directed that handsets don't have International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) would be dead from December 1, 2009 and that should largely take care of this problem. But the bigger problem lies in the case of back end equipment or the infrastructure that is being deployed, as it quite simple to build in back doors in them and there is no prescribed system to scrutinise how secure they are.
The total market size of this telecom equipment industry in India for the year 2008-09 was estimated at Rs.33,261 crore (according to the Voice and Data reports), and the major players in this category are Ericsson (29.1% market share), Nokia Siemens Network (28.6%), Alcatel Lucent (15.7%), Huawei (14.7%), and ZTE (9%). However the American and European players in this segment in the last one year have not been able to grow more than 30% while their Chinese counterparts ZTE and Huawei grew by 100% and 249% respectively.
Interestingly, ZTE is one of the fastest growing telecom companies in the world that posted revenue of $10 billion in the last financial year, of which $1 billion came from its Indian operations. ZTE claims to have 85% market share in the CDMA equipment market with clients like Tata Indicom, Reliance Communications and greenfield operator Sistema Shyam (that operates under the MTS brand) in its kitty and it had also bagged GSM projects from Aircel, Idea Cellular, Tata Communications and Loop Telecom.
The attack on 26/11 had well illustrated the security
lapses in the country and one had assumed that after an attack of this magnitude the Government of India would leave no stone unturned to avoid such mishaps in future. But it does not seem that way as numerous warning calls from Home Ministry in regards to security concern on using Chinese equipments in the telecommunications sector have fallen on deaf ears so far. In India there are currently more than 470 million wireless subscribers and as wireless communications are on an unsecured network, the security agencies have raised issues in regards to Chinese vendors like ZTE and Huawei supplying equipments to various telecom operators in the country.According to Pankaj Kumar Jha, who looks after terrorism and security at IDSA, “Telecom is a very important sector as far as national security is concerned and lot of sensitivity is involved in regards to the same.” These days it is very easy to use the handsets for snooping purposes. There are numerous Chinese companies both branded and unbranded, which can be used for unlawful activities. To address the same DoT has directed that handsets don't have International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) would be dead from December 1, 2009 and that should largely take care of this problem. But the bigger problem lies in the case of back end equipment or the infrastructure that is being deployed, as it quite simple to build in back doors in them and there is no prescribed system to scrutinise how secure they are.
The total market size of this telecom equipment industry in India for the year 2008-09 was estimated at Rs.33,261 crore (according to the Voice and Data reports), and the major players in this category are Ericsson (29.1% market share), Nokia Siemens Network (28.6%), Alcatel Lucent (15.7%), Huawei (14.7%), and ZTE (9%). However the American and European players in this segment in the last one year have not been able to grow more than 30% while their Chinese counterparts ZTE and Huawei grew by 100% and 249% respectively.
Interestingly, ZTE is one of the fastest growing telecom companies in the world that posted revenue of $10 billion in the last financial year, of which $1 billion came from its Indian operations. ZTE claims to have 85% market share in the CDMA equipment market with clients like Tata Indicom, Reliance Communications and greenfield operator Sistema Shyam (that operates under the MTS brand) in its kitty and it had also bagged GSM projects from Aircel, Idea Cellular, Tata Communications and Loop Telecom.
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