The Government is investing $20 billion in projects related to creating information highway, according to Mr Sam Pitroda, Advisor to the Prime Minister on Public Infrastructure, Information and Innovations. This includes $3 billion for setting up the knowledge network and another $6 billion for the National Optic Fibre Cable Network.
“India is at cusp of the next big revolution in the telecom sector, that of broadband. The Government is creating the platform that will enable this revolution,” Mr Pitroda said, while addressing a conference on encouraging indigenous manufacturing organised by C-DOT. He added that projects such as the UIDAI will add to this information highway.
Mr Pitroda said that the Indian telecom equipment manufacturers had the opportunity to go global by focussing on new technology areas. “Indian manufacturers should look at 5G now since the opportunity in 4G is gone,” he said.
Mr V.V.R. Sastry, Executive Director, said that C-DOT has the competencies and the technologies to give greater support to indigenous R&D and manufacturing in telecom sector. The PSU has entered into an agreement with seven manufacturing companies for transferring indigenously designed and developed high speed broadband technology.
The technology, Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON), is being transferred to Indian Telephone Industries Ltd, Bharat Electronics Ltd, VMC Systems Ltd, United Telecoms Ltd, Sai InfoSystem (India) Ltd, and S M Creative Electronics Ltd.
In addition, an agreement has also been signed with Tejas Networks Ltd for customised development and Electronics Corporation of India Ltd is in the advance stage of agreement.
The GPON technology is used for broadband connectivity over optical fibre. C-DOT has indigenously designed and developed GPON technology, which can be used to provide triple play (voice, video and data) through fibre-based networks. The present GPON standards specify 2.5 Gbps (Gigabit per Second) downstream and 1.25 Gbps upstream data capability to customer premise.