The Department of Telecom (DOT) has assigned the task of management and maintenance of government network for confidential intra-departmental communications to Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL).
As per the proposal, MTNL will execute secured telecom network exclusively for select 1,400 users- mainly Union ministers and top bureaucrats and officers of security agencies for inter-ministerial communication. The network will use handsets developed by Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) which are impossible to tap by outsiders or external agencies and MTNL will distribute the handset to users.
Research firm
The government had earlier given the task of executing ‘secured and dedicated communicate/ons network’, or SDCN, for confidential calls among government departments to (C-DoT), a state run telecom research firm and fixed January 30, 2014 as the deadline. However, the C-DOT failure to meet the deadline forced the government to hand over the task to MTNL, sources said.
In a recent review meeting, the DOT has asked the C-DOT to handover all assets to MTNL by end of this month. MTNL will be given two months time to execute the project.