Telecommunications data retention (DR) refers to legal requirements to store telecommunications-related data for the purpose of combating serious crimes. EU Directive 2006/24/EC has been issued to harmonize these requirements across the EU, but such regulations also exist in many countries outside the EU.

A data retention solution is not usually a revenue generating investment, yet selecting the most suitable solution can make a difference in terms of costs, ease of use, fulfillment of regulations, protection of citizens’ right to privacy and operator brand value. There are many ideas concerning data retention that seem well-founded from the point of view of a service provider. Yet, subject to deeper scrutiny, they lose much of their value.

Some of those statements include the following:

• “All data needed for data retention is already in our billing systems. We just need to store it for a little longer.”
• “All the necessary data is somewhere in one of our many systems, so we can always collect the required info if need be.”
• “Our existing systems are secure enough for data retention purposes.”
• “A specialized data retention solution is expensive, and we do not have a business case for it.”
• “Once our data retention solution is put into operation then we can forget about it because we have complied with the law.”

Only with a careful analysis of all the factors addressed above can a Communication Service Provider (CSP) fulfill data retention regulations at a minimum cost.

Download White paper:

 Data retention: avoiding the traps (pdf)