The government today amended telecom licences making it mandatory for equipment suppliers to share the "source code" and the "design details" to address the security concerns.

It also said that a penalty, equivalent to 100 per cent of the contract value, shall be imposed on telecom equipment suppliers in case of detection of any security breach.

Operators also face a fine of Rs 50 crore for every purchase of equipment.

The Department of Telecom (DoT) officials said that the information like "source code" (password) and "design details" would be kept in the escrow account in encrypted form and would be used only in case of security emergency.

Most of the telecom vendors, including Ericsson, had opposed to share the "source code" saying it is a proprietary information and cannot be kept in an escrow account.

DoT asserted that this has been done for all vendors and is not limited to vendors from China.

Two telecom operators' association COAI and AUSPI did not offer any immediate comments and said they will react only after studying the amendments in detail.

Main telecom vendors are Ericsson, Nokia-Siemens, Alcatel Lucent and Chinese players like Huawei and ZTE among others.

The DoT has sent the amended licence agreement to all the operators for their consent.

The DoT is also understood to have included a clause which mandates that Indian engineers operate and maintain the networks of telecom service providers.

The amendment comes in the wake of concerns being raised by the security agencies regarding the core telecom equipment imported from China.

Now, telecom operators would be able to import equipment, which were on hault for last more than six months as the players were not able to procure security clearance from the government.

The DoT said the operators would have to engage services of international accredited network audit and certification agencies in consultation with licensor (DoT) to perform network auditing and their testing.

The third party audit and certification initially limits to core equipments such as Routers, Switches, Firewall, and the software associated with all the telecom operations and services.

The licensor (DoT) has the option to issue directions to add more systems to the list of core equipments.

The DoT has also asked the operators to provide location details of mobile customers in the licensed service area with a precision of up to minimum 50 meters as a part of Call Data Record (CDR).

"The necessary technical upgrades in the existing equipment must be installed to the requirement of Location Based Service (LBS) within one year from the date of this amendment," DoT said.

Sources in the CDMA operators' lobby welcomed the decision saying it is across all the vendors, whether from China, Europe or any other country.

Telecom vendors, including Ericsson, had opposed to share the "source code" saying it is a proprietary information and cannot be shared.

Ericsson, Nokia-Siemens, Alcatel Lucent and Chinese players like Huawei and ZTE are the main equipment suppliers.

The DoT has sent the amended licence agreement to all the operators for their consent.