India’s performance ‘extremely well’ in rolling out telecom infra: DST secretary Abhay Karandikar

India has performed “extremely well” in rolling out one of the largest telecom infrastructures in the country, with the number of 5G base stations also growing rapidly, said a senior official of the Department of Science & Technology (DST) Wednesday.

India’s top telcos Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel started the rollout of their 5G networks in October last year, and are nearing completion around December 2023 to early next year.

“In the last few years, we have made an important and significant beginning that really needs to be now our perspective, that is, India being a market and user of these deep tech, telecom and networking infrastructure. (India) is now aspiring to play a role where we have developed technology indigenously, and play (a role) at the global standardisation level,” said Abhay Karandikar, Secretary, Department of Science & Technology.

He was speaking at the ‘TechSurge: India’s Deep Tech Transformation’ industry conference, organised by Celesta Capital, US-India Business Council, and Quad Investors Network.

Karandikar said India has been actively contributing to the development of 5G telecom standards, and is eyeing participation in the development of 6G so that the sixth-generation technology can address the country’s unique requirements.

“Time is really right. We have the right areas and talent, we have an open market and we have the enabling policies to develop an ecosystem where we can develop deep tech startups in the area of, for example, semiconductor design and telecom infrastructure equipment,” he noted.

He said India is emphasising intellectual property (IP) declarations, as well as, developing some of the IPs into Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) to monetise the IPs.

There is also a focus on how “we can convert these IPRs (Intellectual Property Rights) and patents into products and technology”, the DST Secretary said.