India Celebrates Its International Collaborations on World Telecommunication and Information Society Day

The Indian telecom sector has witnessed significant developments in recent years, setting the stage for a transformative era. Driven by unprecedented data consumption, a vast user base, and a policy-friendly environment, India continues to foster industry growth and start-up innovation. Today India has 99% coverage footprint in 4G with over 6 lakh villages covered in 4G and around 4.42 lakh 5G BTS.

The DoT is also establishing strategic international partnerships and collaborations to build a world-class telecom ecosystem to enhance global connectivity and position India as a global leader in digital innovation and infrastructure. Telecom Diplomacy has helped attracting new business ventures, forge partnerships with global leaders, nurture domestic startups, demonstrate India’s commitment to driving innovation and securing its leadership position in the global telecommunications landscape. The telecom diplomacy has been focussed on outcomes and many green shoots are visible.

India’s engaged with partner countries, telecom chip companies and tech giants to forge strategic partnerships. During the visits in Sept 23 and Jan 24 to the USA, the ‘US-India OpenRAN Acceleration Roadmap’ was formalised to foster Open RAN adoption and mutual trust for trusted suppliers

Collaboration with the FCC and NSF of USA enabled India to start dialogue on international best practices in spectrum allocation, quality of service assurance, and future tech research. The RINGS programme of NSF has the potential to enhance effective collaboration of industry, academia and Government R&D and is a good model that has led to discussions with Indian industry on similar lines. The response has been enthusiastic.

The gap between imports and exports has decreased in recent years. Most of the 5G demands are being met from Made in India. Indian companies have exported Rs 25200 crores worth of telecom equipment and accessories last year. DoT has taken concerted efforts to help our domestic companies showcase their domestic products in all foreign fora so that these can be exported…VVDN has setup offices at 3 location in USA – Vermont, Austin and NY and is already serving clients like CISCO, Maveneir and TESLA. Further, 31 startups participated in MWC USA and Spain and developed business leads for around $100mn.

World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA) is being held in October 2024 for the first time in India in which over 2000 delegates from 180 countries will participate and will decide the future direction of standards for next generation of telecommunication systems… Significant efforts were undertaken to make IMC a global event like Mobile World Congress by 2025 that will boost India’s economy by attracting international participants and investments.

Tie ups with PAN IIT USA, GSMA, IEEE, INSA have resulted in broad basing IMC 2024 into a World Class hi-tech telecom event.

The DoT explored potential collaborations in Quantum Networks and Quantum Teleportation with University of Chicago to elevate R&D, foster innovation, and fortify the startup ecosystem in Quantum Communications within India. A quantum teleportation link between USA and India is being explored.

The above outreach efforts have succeeded in propelling India into leadership position in international fora, improving exports, build bridges with advance countries, learning from the best practices and access to specialised knowledge from trusted partner countries.