Unified License Agreement

Subject – Economy

Context – Citing security, Centre asks phone firms to keep call records for two years

Concept –

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has amended the Unified License Agreement asking telecom and Internet service providers as well as all other telecom licensees to maintain commercial and call detail records for at least two years, instead of the current one-year practice.
- The additional time, was based on requests from multiple security agencies.
DoT has said all call detail record, exchange detail record, and IP detail record of communications “exchanged” on a network must be archived for two years or until specified by the government for “scrutiny” for security reasons.
Internet service providers will also have to maintain details of “internet telephony” in addition to the usual IP detail record for a period of two years.
Under Clause No. 39.20 of the licence agreement that the DoT has with the operators, the latter have to preserve records including CDRs and IP detail records (IPDR), for at least one year for scrutiny by the Licensor (which is DoT) for “security reasons,” and the Licensor “may issue directions/instructions from time to time” with respect to these records.
The licence condition also goes on to mandate that CDRs be provided by mobile companies to law-enforcement agencies and to various courts upon their specific requests or directions, for which there is a laid-down protocol.