Long-awaited 3G services in India may once again be placed on hold as the government has asked operators like Reliance Comm and Tata Teleservices to stop their launch of 3G. The telecom operators will only be allowed to resume launching 3G services once they have adhered to the government's security norms for legal interception.
It seems that these norms seem to mostly apply to 3G video calls. The Department of Telecommunications says that for security measures, they need to be able to intercept these video calls in real time. During a demonstration by the telecom operators, the DoT found that calls longer than eight minutes could not be intercepted.
This hold comes at the annoyance of privatetelecom operators as state-owned telecom operators, MTNL and BSNL have been allowed to roll out their 3G services with none of these security issues addressed.
Reliance Communication had rolled out their 3G services earlier this month in certain zones, aiming to cover the country with 3G by March 2011. Tata Docomo had already launched their 3G services this past Diwali. Vodafon plans to launch their 3G services by Q1 of 2011, whether their launch will be affected by this security hold up or not begs to be answered.
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