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In an effort to prevent misuse of bulk connections by terror outfits and other anti-social elements, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has asked telecom companies to include details such as latitude and longitude of the premises along with the date and time when the physical verification of such customers is done.
The latest guidelines by DoT come after inputs from security agencies under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) indicated that terror outfits could be using bulk connections issued under false and fake company names to avoid being intercepted during their communications.
In the new guidelines, the DoT has said telcos should conduct the physical verification of such bulk subscribers every six months and note the latitude and longitude of the premises along with the date and time every time. “The licensee shall identify gibberish entries (that is single nonsensical word or group of nonsensical words) in their existing CAF (customer acquisition form) and data, and shall remove all such anomalies,” the DoT said in its latest guidelines.
For such bulk connection requests made by subscribers on behalf of some company, the connection should not be activated unless the details such as name of the company, the authorised signatory, and key officials are cross-verified from the details present on the Ministry of Corporate Affairs’s portal, the DoT said. As per the present norms, telcos are required to furnish details of new bulk connections on a monthly basis to a senior deputy director general of the DoT’s vigilance department.
