State-owned BSNL will shortly award a crucial equipment contract to China's Huawei for expanding its countrywide core Internet network, that may stoke fresh security concerns over procurement of telecom gear from Chinese vendors.
Top executives with direct knowledge told ET that BSNL's core IP network will be capable of handling data, voice and video traffic, and would be the principal communications backbone carrying sensitive personal information of Indian citizens for a host of central broadband initiatives like the national optic fibre network (NOFN), the National Knowledge Network and the government's ambitious Aadhar program that plans to give a unique identity to the country's 1.2 billion residents.
Sources in the communications ministry conceded there is pressure to keep Chinese network vendors out of sensitive projects on security grounds although the Indian government is yet to take any definite stand on a recent report by the US Congress Panel about Huawei and ZTE posing a security threat owing to their reported links with the Chinese military.
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