Submarine Cable Landing Stations

General

1. Landing station for international gateway for Internet shall be within the service area of the ISP licensee.

2. The landing station for international gateway for Internet shall be used only for carrying Internet traffic.

3. The landing station shall not be used for any unlawful activity or against public interest.

4. The landing station configuration shall be strictly and exactly as per the details provided in the prescribed application. Any variation to that shall only be with the prior written permission of the Telecom Authority.

5. The landing station shall be set up only after getting the permission or clearance from the Telecom Authority.

6. Any information that is asked by the Telecom Authority from the licensee shall be provided forthwith by it and in any case, not later than 15 days of asking for the same.

7. The Telecom Authority or personnel authorized by the Telecom Authority reserves the right to carry out surprise inspection at the landing station to ensure that only Internet traffic is carried through the landing station and the landing station is not used for unlawful activities or against public interest.

8. All other applicable clearances/permissions that are required as per the laws of the land shall be obtained by the ISP licensee.

9. The transmission link between the ISP node/point of presence and the landing station, if they are not co-located, is regulated as per the ISP licence agreement condition 7.2 of schedule C, part II i.e. the transmission link should be from DoT, licensed basic service operators, Railways, State Electricity Board, National Powergrid Corp. or any other operator specially authorized to lease such links to ISP.

10. The ISP shall provide information about all ISPs that would be connected to the landing station. Any addition shall be with the prior written permission of the Telecom Authority.

11. Any change or addition in the network topology of landing station shall be done only with the prior written permission of the Telecom Authority.

12. Any change or addition in the type of services offered shall be with the prior written permission of the Telecom Authority.

13. Landing station shall not be set up in security sensitive areas. The Internet nodes covering places of security importance shall be routed through VSNL only. The security sensitive areas would be identified from time to time. As on date the security sensitive areas are Punjab, J&K , Northeastern states, border areas of Rajasthan, Andaman & Nicobar islands and coastal areas of Gujarat and Tamilnadu (excluding Chennai).

14. The ISP licensee shall make available all the billing details of any subscriber on demand by Telecom Authority.

15. The ISP licensee shall block Internet sites and individual subscribers, as identified by Telecom Authority.

16. The Telecom Authority (Licensor) reserves the right to make changes in the security-related requirements.

17. In case of any complaint or dispute with regard to the resource (bandwidth) from the submarine cable or from any subscriber regarding service, such complaint or dispute shall be a matter between the licensee and the bandwidth provider/the subscriber. The licensor shall not be party to any such complaint/dispute. The licensee undertakes to indemnify licensor in respect of any action against licensor for acts of commission or omission by or on the part of the resource (bandwidth) provider, licensee, its agents and servants.

18. The licensee shall ensure that the landing station does not interfere with any other existing systems of Department of Telecom Operations (DTO) or any telecom service provider.

19. The ISP licensee who sets up the landing station cannot claim any right or will not get any special preference to carry voice traffic, whenever the sector is opened up for private participation.

20. The ISP licencee would take all necessary steps to ensure that these terms and conditions and the terms and conditions of the ISP licence are complied by themselves as well as by the subscribers/entities who use the service through the ISP licencee.

21. The landing station should be located within 100 km from the seashore.

Level of Encryption

22. The licensee shall ensure that bulk encryption is not deployed by ISPs connecting to landing station.

23. Individuals/groups/organizations are permitted to use encryption upto 40 bit key length in the RSA algorithms or its equivalent in other algorithms without having to obtain permission from the Telecom Authority. However, if encryption equipments higher than this limit are to be deployed, individuals/groups/organizations shall do so with the prior written permission of the Telecom Authority and deposit the decryption key, split into two parts, with the Telecom Authority.

Monitoring Requirements/Facilities

It should be possible to effectivelymonitor the traffic at the landing station from the national security point ofview and that only the Internet data traffic is carried. The requirements wouldinclude, but not be limited to:

24. Monitoring to ensure that only Internet data traffic is carried through landing station and not voice traffic.

25. Monitoring from the security angle—online and off-line (capture, store and retrieve) monitoring of all classes of traffic (Internet, video, audio, etc.) specified by various attributes viz. destination, recipient, sender, key words, etc.

26. Good quality intrusion detection system to ensure that the landing station (link) does not become a launch pad for attacking sites within India.

27. Agencies authorized by the Government should be able to monitor all types of traffic passed through the landing terminals, including data, fax, speech, video and multimedia, etc., both in interactive and non-interactive modes.

28. The monitoring should be possible on the basis of key words/key expressions/addresses (IP address or e-mail address) of initiating or terminating subscribers.

29. It should be possible to scan through entire traffic passing through the gateway and filter the traffic as per the key words/key expressions and addresses defined by the security agencies. Filtered traffic should be stored in the memory/directory provided for the security agencies, which have defined the monitoring requirement. Before storing the monitored information, it should be segregated and stored in the directory in different files. The filtered information must be decoded and stored in such a way that direct hard copy of fax and data or audio/video tapes of the speech/video recording could be produced. Log of recorded information for each agency must be created in the directory of the agency concerned displaying the details like date and time of recording, number of record, etc.

30. Each of the security agencies should be provided with a specified dedicated space/memory/directory/storage in the monitoring centre computer.

31. It should be possible for the monitoring agencies to access the monitoring centre computer through PSTN line, ISDN line or dedicated lines (cable pair or optical link). Adequate number of all types of interfaces may be provided at the monitoring centre to facilitate remote accessing for the security agencies.

32. Remote Accessing/Log-in facility for security agencies should be through fully secured unique password. Each agency must have different password. The access password should be re-definable (changeable) by security agency concerned.

33. It should be possible to monitor the same traffic by more than one security agency simultaneously. However, no agency should know the traffic being monitored by other agencies.

34. Office space of 20 ft. x 20 ft. with adequate uninterrupted power supply and air-conditioning which will be physically secured and accessible only to the personnel authorized by Telecom Authority, shall be provided by the licensee at each location, free of cost.

35. The installation of the monitoring equipment at the landing station is to be done by the ISP licensee. After installation of the monitoring equipment, the ISP licensee should get the same inspected by monitoring/security agencies. The permission to operate/commission the gateway will be given only after this.

36. The cost of the monitoring equipment including its commissioning shall be borne by the licensee.

37. ISPs should provide the monitoring software, if specially, developed for monitoring traffic at cable landing terminal, to the security agencies free of cost.

38. In addition to the equipment, one local exclusive telephone line shall be made available by the licensee at the monitoring centre, at the cost of the licensee.

39. The cost of maintenance of the equipment and infrastructure at the monitoring centre located at the premises of the licensee shall be borne by the licensee.

40. The licensee shall provide all technical details of and access to various equipment, including hardware, software and communications equipment, when demanded by the Telecom Authority.

41. Towards the administrative cost for performing monitoring function, a contribution of Rs 20 (Twenty) lakh per annum per landing station will be made by the ISP licensee.

42. Training to be given to the security personnel on the equipment installed at the landing station.

43. A terminal of the NMS, with full access rights will be given to the monitoring agencies. (It is presumed that the landing station would have a state-of-the-art network management system, which can monitor/manage the network effectively.)

44. The Telecom Authority shall have full rights to monitor all the traffic that goes through the landing station. The licensee shall ensure that the bandwidth provider (e.g.: submarine cable company) gives the complete monitoring rights to the Telecom Authority. Also the licensee has to get the assurance from the bandwidth provider that it shall co-operate with the Telecom Authority and also provide any information requested by the Telecom Authority including but not limited to the aforesaid issue of monitoring.

45. Any attempted intrusion that comes to the notice of the licencee should be immediately reported to the Telecom Authority.

46. A suitable monitoring equipment/system to cater to the above mentioned user requirements should be given in the application. Complete and detailed network diagram including the monitoring set up should be clearly indicated. The licensee should be able to demonstrate the efficacy of the monitoring equipment.

Commercial

47. A non-refundable processing fee of Rs. 50,000 (Rupees Fifty thousand only) per landing station in the form of demand draft payable to Pay & Accounts Officer (Hqrs.), DoT, New Delhi should be submitted with the application. Applications without the processing fee will not be processed.

Submission of Application

48. The guidelines and the proforma for application for setting up of submarine cable landing stations for international gateways for Internet are available from ADG(LR), 10th Floor, Sanchar Bhavan, New Delhi, between 1500 hrs.—1700 hrs. on any working day and in the web site dotindia.com. Fifteen (15) copies of the application alongwith all annexures may be submitted to ADG(LR), 10th Floor, Sanchar Bhavan, New Delhi - 110 001.