India, April 14 -- The ongoing trade tensions between the US and China have put Indian telecom companies in the crosshairs.

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has issued a fresh directive to all major telcos - including Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, BSNL - seeking details about Chinese gear deployed in their networks, ET Telecom reported.

The move comes as the Centre seeks to track the usage of China-made equipment in India's telecom and space sectors to ward off potential security threats.

While India has excluded Chinese telecom equipment and technology vendors such as Huawei and ZTE from participating in its 5G rollout, their equipment is still widely used in 2G, 3G and 4G infrastructure, particularly in the co...