European telecom vendors Ericsson and Nokia along with US-based Cisco and home-grown Tejas are among those telecom equipment vendors that have bagged the trusted sources approval.
Recently, Tejas Networks was acquired by Tata Sons’ Panatone Finvest, which is the only domestic telecom equipment vendor that had received the approval.
The National Cyber Security Coordinator (NCSC) provided its approval to the above-mentioned vendors.
On the other hand, Chinese vendors ZTE and Huawei are yet to complete their documentation process in order to be eligible for the NCSC approval.
While the Chinese equipment maker Huawei is yet to complete the process and is all set to meet the obligations of the NCSC to get the approval of trusted sources. ZTE however, had completed the process and is awaiting the authority’s approval.
Meanwhile, French identity-related security services provider IDEMIA, an industrial IoT solutions provider Proscend, Dori Software, and PC Solutions have already received the trusted sources approval from the NCSC, which is the designated authority.
However, the telecom operators in India are not able to place purchase orders even with the vendors who received the trusted product approval.
Regarding this, a person familiar with the matter has said that this is an initial step in the whole process. For now, it does not mean much as the companies that received the trusted sources’ approval can get their equipment rejected in cases of the authority’s dissatisfaction.
The first set of trusted products could arrive between the end of this month or early in December.