New Delhi, Aug 11: While hailing the release of the guidelines for setting up Submarine Cable Landing Stations, the industry fears that this could push up the total cost of projects in several cases. However, the guidelines are not entirely unexpected and are in line with the broad guidelines issued by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) earlier. The more important concern for the industry now is the time frame that the processing of applications will take.Another major area of concern for the industry is the maximum permissible limit of 40 bit encryption, stipulated by the guidelines. This is considered quite unsafe and hackable, by the industry and is restricted only for e-mails. This has been done as the Indian security agencies neither have the confidence nor expertise in tackling higher levels of encryption, feels the industry.
``The world over, all progressive and serious-minded countries including the USA, are using 128 bit encryption. Specially for the e-commerce, 128 bit is a better bet. Hence, it definitely an area of concern for us,'' said ISPAI secretary Amitabh Singhal. Interestingly, guidelines for digital signatures are not out yet. Since digital signatures have everything to do with encryption, until that happens, the encryption issues can not be resolved, say industry experts.
In a major decision, ISPs have been allowed to share their bandwidth with other ISPs. This, an industry spokesperson said, was a positive step, as the ISPs could now either sell the bandwidth to other smaller ISPs, or set up the gateway as part of a consortium.
Meanwhile, the strict monitoring guidelines, which put the entire financial burden of the same on the companies setting up landing stations, were expected and are required in order to address the security concerns of the nation, says Akhil Gupta, joint managing director, Bharti Telecom. He also says that even though the guidelines allow companies to set up landing stations, within a distance of no more than 100 km from the sea, most serious players will set up landing stations within 4-5 km of the sea shore.
This guideline has been given to protect the interest of the National Long Distance Operators, he added.
Says NASSCOM president Dewang Mehta who is also a memebr of the panel which finnalises the guidelines, "We are very sure that the private agencies will take leadership in obtaining submarine cable bandwidth. Competition is always good and availability of more bandwidth, will make it more affordable and that will help the consumer. We feel that in the next 12 months, at least 20 GBps of bandwidth will be added through submarine cable in the country."
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.