The office of the National Cyber Security Coordinator Rajesh Pant has finalized its list of approved vendors for telecom equipment, the Economic Times reported. A list has not been made available in the public domain as of yet, but ET reports that Chinese vendors like Huawei and ZTE are not included in the list of approved vendors. This was long expected, as excluding Chinese equipment manufacturers under national security considerations was the main goal of this exercise. Portal to be established The government will establish a portal for telcos to submit details of telecom gear they are acquiring, and based on the approved vendors list, the government will approve or reject proposals for gear acquisition. The Department of Telecommunications on Tuesday posted a circular requiring each telco to designate (through a board resolution) a point of contact for approving telecom gear requests. They will need to ask for permission each time they upgrade equipment that is already in the telco's network but is not in the government's approved list. The government held a meeting that ET reported was attended by the following companies: Ericsson, Nokia, Cisco, Samsung, Qualcomm, Ciena, Intel, AMD, Tejas, Nivetti systems, C-DoT and VNL. Telcos reportedly complained that the amount of information sought by the government was too much, and requested some more time to comply. Also read DoT Amends Telecom License To Notify ‘Trusted Sources’, Likely To Exclude Chinese Firms Huawei India Explores Tech-Sharing Agreement As Ban On Chinese Vendors Looms
