A new law making it mandatory for telecom operators to give access to government agencies to all services they offer is expected to be coming up next year.

Taking a cue from America's Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), government is examining how a similar law could be enacted in India under which it would be made mandatory for anyone offering services to give access to security agencies.

"We hope that the law will come up sometime next year," an official said.

Currently security agencies access the telecom services under licensing agreement. The need for a separate law was felt after a stand-off with Research in Motion, the makers of BlackBerry phones which showed its reservation in allowing access to all its services. Negotiations between security agencies and RIM are still on.

The CALEA defines the existing statutory obligation of telecommunications carriers to assist law enforcement in executing electronic surveillance pursuant to court order or other lawful authorisation.

Through the new law, the government would like to preserve law enforcement's ability to conduct lawfully authorised electronic surveillance while preserving public safety, people's right to privacy and the telecommunications industry's competitiveness.

Its primary goal would be to ensure that law enforcement agencies have all the resources to access broadband Internet providers (ISP) and interconnected voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) providers.

Besides, the government is also contemplating constituting an authority -- Telecom Security Commission -- comprising representatives from Ministry of Home, Department of Telecommunications and Telecom industry.

The Commission will take care of all security concerns, grievances of telecom service providers and ensure their implementation.

The DoT is already in touch with the US authorities to understand the implementation of the provisions of CALEA and how to deal with security requirement for monitoring communication networks built from imported equipment.

The new law will ensure that the telecommunication carriers and manufacturers of telecommunications equipment will modify and design their equipment and services to ensure that they have built-in surveillance capabilities.

The law will allow security agencies to monitor all telephone, broadband internet, and VoIP traffic in real-time.