India Army used the ‘Sambhav’ smartphones during the last round of talks held with China. This talk was held in October. Now these ‘Sambhav’ smartphones have been distributed in huge number to officers.
The Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi mentioned during the press conference that this smartphone was used for secure communication.
Around 30,000 of these Sambhav phones have been given to officers for secure communication and have been provided with their own applications which can be used for sharing critical information as well, defence sources told ANI.
The project was launched last year. The handsets used for the project have applications like M-Sigma which is seen as an equivalent of the popular WhatsApp application for messaging and sharing documents, pictures and videos.
The Army is also hoping that the internal smartphones which can be used on Airtel and Jio mobile networks, will help in curbing the leakage of important documents in public.
A number of Indian Army officials had been using WhatsApp and other similar applications for sharing information and documents and almost all of them were getting leaked in the public domain. The phones also have the numbers of all important functionaries and the officials don’t need to save the numbers, the sources said.
The Indian Army has indigenously developed the “end-to-end secure mobile ecosystem” to provide secure communication with instant connectivity. The SAMBHAV (Secure Army Mobile Bharat Version) — functions on contemporary 5G technology and is fully encrypted.
