India To Tap SMS

The Indian government is pushing for wireless carriers their to install equipment to store and monitor every SMS text message that gets sent across their network. They say they need to do this to protect against terrorism. Leaving politics aside, I wonder if this hurts wireless adoption. The cost to the carriers to install and use the equipment is quite high, and those costs will be passed on to end-users (possibly in fees associated with SMSing). That can only lead to slower adoption rates. There is also the standard question of whether or not recording more data actually makes it more difficult to find the important data. However, it will be interesting to see if other nations (including, possibly, the US) follow suit. With everyone worried about terrorism these days, it would not be surprising to see more governments at least make sure that wireless carriers have the ability to tap SMS (and MMS), setting up a huge additional cost for wireless carriers worldwide.

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