The Intelligence Bureau (IB) has advised the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) to block up all Internet telephony (VoIP) services until a system is set up to track such calls.

According to IB, India does have the mechanism to track domestic and international internet telephony calls. The IB has also asked the DoT to find and install a tracking system as soon as possible.

Vijay Mukhi, cyber security expert said that the government has to block VoIP services in the interest of national security. Terrorists have continuously been making use of such internet telephony services as they are aware that India doesn’t possess any mechanism to track such calls.

The Intelligence Bureau has said that in VoIP services the caller line identification (CLI) is absent, so it is almost impossible to track location of the caller. Moreover, Indian telecom operators are providing the VoIP services for both domestic as well as international calls. The calls passing through the VoIP/IP route, lack sufficient parameters required for successful call tracing.

In the US and Europe, there are mechanisms to trace each and every VoIP call. The companies providing internet telephony services in foreign countries have provisions for governments to trace the calls.

If government follows IB’s recommendations, then there will a huge impact on the hundreds of thousands of customers who are using these low cost services.