Till January 2024, Centre will provide free 5G Test Bed to recognized start-ups and MSMEs
Author: BI Bureau
New Delhi: The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) under the Ministry of Communications has offered the usage of 5G Test Bed free of cost to the start-ups and MSMEs recognised by the Government of India up to January 2024. All 5G stakeholders, that is, industry, academia, service providers, R&D institutions, equipment manufacturers, etc., can utilise this facility at a very nominal rate.
This is being announced in order to encourage the usage of the Test Bed and give a fillip to the development of indigenous technologies/ products in line with ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ vision. Several start-ups and companies are already testing their products and services using the Test Bed.
Keeping in view India’s specific requirements and to take lead in 5G deployment, the Department of Telecommunications approved financial grant for the multi-institute collaborative project to set up ‘Indigenous 5G Test Bed’ in India with total cost of Rs.224 Crore in March, 2018. The eight collaborating institutes in the project were IIT-Madras, IIT Delhi, IIT-Hyderabad, IIT-Bombay, IIT-Kanpur, IISc-Bangalore, Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering & Research (SAMEER) and Centre of Excellence in Wireless Technology (CEWiT).
The end-to-end test bed is acquiescent with the global 3GPP standard and the ORAN standard. Indigenous 5G Test Bed provides an open 5G test bed that enables R&D teams of Indian academia and industry to validate their products, prototypes, algorithms and demonstrate various services. Further, it provides complete access for research teams to work on novel concepts/ideas holding potential for standardization in India and on global scale.
The development of this Indigenous Test Bed is a key milestone step for India’s becoming self-reliant in the 5G Technology domain and now leading towards 5G Aatmanirbhar Bharat. This Test Bed is providing the Indigenous capability for testing and validation of 5G products being developed and manufactured by Indian start-ups, MSME, R&D, Academia and industry users. This has resulted in huge reduced design time and cost efficiency due to which Indian 5G products are likely to become market competitive globally.
The development of this Test Bed has also resulted into the development of many 5G Technologies/ IPs which are available for technology transfer to Industry players which shall facilitate the Industry Players for smooth and speedy deployment of 5G in India. /BI/
More In Tech Governance
The exports of agricultural commodities from March to June 2020 shot up by 23.24 percent on-year to Rs 25,552.7 crores.
As the economy comes to a standstill amid the coronavirus-led lockdown, India’s agriculture sector has taken the baton of economic growth in its hands. The exports of agricultural commodities from March to June 2020 shot up by 23.24 percent on-year to Rs 25,552.7 crores, according to the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare. The government said that self-reliant agriculture is critical for the goal of an Atmanirbhar Bharat and for this, agricultural export is extremely important as besides earning foreign exchange for the country, the exports help farmers, producers, and exporters to take advantage of the wider international market and increase their income.
The surge in exports has also resulted in increased production in the farm sector by increasing coverage area and productivity. The share of India’s agricultural exports and imports in the world agriculture trade in 2017 was 2.27 percent and 1.90 percent, respectively. Even during the difficult time of pandemic lockdown, India took care not to disturb the world food supply chain and continued to export, the government said.
Ministry of Agriculture has prepared a comprehensive action plan for the promotion of Agri trade; the twofold approach focuses on boosting Agri Export with emphasis on value addition and action plan for Import Substitution. Recently, the Agriculture sector has witnessed a series of reforms, giving more choices to the farmers to sell their produce at competitive rates.
To mention a few, the Export strategy focuses on the export promotion of fast-evolving niche markets of Wellness food/ Health-conscious food/nutraceuticals, Development of “Brand India” in campaign mode to help penetration into new foreign markets and of new products which automatically translates into higher value realization, Gulf countries have been identified as focus destination to increase the market share which is a strong market for India though presently India caters to only 10-12% share of their total imports. A product-market matrix has been made containing a list of products of strength that could be expanded in new geographies and a list of known markets which can be introduced with newer products.
At the behest of the Department of Agricultural Cooperation & Farmers’ Welfare, Ministry of Agriculture, product-specific Export Promotion Forums have been created to lead Agri exports to new heights. Each Export Promotion Forum shall be having exporters of the related commodity as its members along with official members representing concerned Ministries/Departments of the Central and State Governments. Chairman APEDA shall be the chairman of each of these forums. The forums will meet at least once every two months, to discuss recommendations on issues pertaining to the export.
The recommendations of the forum will be placed in the product committee / Authority of APEDA. The Forum will keep in close contact with the concerned organization of the Ministry of Agriculture such as MIDH, Extension, NPPO, etc., DGFT, Ministry of Civil Aviation, MoFPI, etc. to further the interest of agricultural export.
