Disclosure of sensitive information to the telecom department and home ministry by Chinese telecom vendors —Huawei and ZTE — has now put the spotlight on Western vendors. The Centre has now asked Western vendors — Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens, Alcatel Lucent amongst others — to disclose their detailed ownership and governance structures, supply chain information, security features and standards for their products and details of all government or third party security audit tests that have already been carried out on their networks and services, an official aware of the development told ET.

The official also added that the move was being resisted by European vendors, a step that could possibly delay procurement of critical telecoms gear by Indian mobile service providers. A leading Western telecoms gear maker also admitted that the company had received a communication seeking ‘details’ from the Indian government.

Specifically, the government has asked these firms to submit third party security audit reports based on ongoing and past tests that have been carried out on their hardware, software and other core telecoms equipment components on similar lines as submitted by Huawei and ZTE. For instance, Huawei has submitted reports of the Strategic Procurement Audit that British Telecom had undertaken on it. It had given the Indian government a copy of the supplier qualification audit that Vodafone had done on it along with details of the Russian government’s security agency notification on the company. Additionally, the Chinese firm has also provided details of the third party audits carried out by private agencies Telcordia and Electronic Warfare Associates on its networks.

India, the world’s fastest growing mobile market, wishes to send a clear signal that its security concerns extend to all telecom equipment vendors and it is not targeting Chinese firms alone. Another possible reason behind the government’s move is that a significant bulk of the manufacturing capabilities of many Western headquartered telecom gear makers are based out of China. Besides some of these firms source a bulk of their hardware requirements for networks from China.

The government had agreed to allow import of Chinese-made telecom gear, certified by international security audit firms, as a temporary measure to address security concerns from imported equipment, till its own dedicated certification centre and test lab is in place.