[economic times] The home ministry has asked all mobile phone companies to store all text messages for six months, against the current practice where they are usually saved for just a couple of days, a step telcos say will considerably increase their operational costs.
Indians send between 130 and 150 billion SMSes, or text messages, a month. Storing text messages will require operators to invest in data centres, and telcos fear that the government may soon extend demands for storing voice calls.
At present, lawful interception is only done for calls and text messages from specific numbers on the instructions of security agencies. Intelligence agencies are of the view that archiving all SMSes over a six-month period is vital to meet security requirements of the country, and this proposal was outlined to telcos during a recent meeting, said an official with direct knowledge of the developments.
Telcos that ET spoke to confirmed the home ministry’s requirement and said that the industry would jointly take up this issue with the Centre. Telcos said that the Center must first spell out privacy issues and frame laws that will address concerns related to storing text messages for a six-month period.
This comes even as telcos are lobbying with the interior ministry for a delayed or phased implementation of a proposal that will require all operators to install advanced tracking devices on every cell tower in the country to pinpoint the location of any individual within 50 meters of accuracy.
India has over 700 million cellular connections and customers enjoy the lowest call rates in the world. Operators say that setting up data centres for SMS storage will force them to pass on the costs to customers. They also add that operating costs per tower will be up by 50%, unless the government agrees to their demands for a phased implementation of tracking devices on cell towers.
The home ministry had recently asked mobile firms to upgrade their networks infrastructure to implement a system similar to that of Enhanced 911 or E911 in the US.
This telecommunications-based system automatically associates a physical address with the calling party’s telephone number, and routes the call to the most appropriate Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) for that address. This provides emergency responders with the location of the emergency without the person calling for help having to provide it and is useful in times of fires, break-ins, accidents, kidnapping and other events where communicating one’s location is difficult or impossible.
The positional accuracy is calculated by taking the triangulation from the three towers closest to the caller. In the US, laws require that carriers be able to get the location of a caller to within 50 meters for 67% of the calls and 150 meters for 95% of calls.
“India has over 4,50,000 cell towers and it will cost anywhere between $2,000 and $5,000 per site for location measuring units,” explained an executive with leading telecom company.
Executives also pointed out that since population density and amount of traffic carried by a cell tower were far greater compared to the US, replicating the E911 would lead to interference issues.
“All the data collected by location measuring units will have to be hauled back to the network operating centre either on fibre on backhaul increasing the operating costs,” said a top executive with a firm that offers both GSM and CDMA-based telecom services.
Telcos told to archive text messages for 6 months
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