With what appears to be unusual urgency, India's Department of Telecom (DoT) has pushed telecom operators twice, over the last 20 days, to submit compliance reports on the accuracy of location sharpness achieved by them so far. Read this from 30th December and this from 15th January(both pdf's). The issue of the government forcing telecom operators to increase location sharpness by installing LBS equipment has been on the radar since 26th October 2009, as we had reported earlier. In response to a RTI filed with the DoT, MediaNama had received copies of the notices issued by the DoT to the telecom operators, along with Bharti Airtel’s response to the notice expressing concern over the high cost of installation (Rs. 4500 crores) and consumer privacy issues. DoT had asked telcos to install LBS systems with an accuracy of 50 metres in February last year after they failed to…
