India will soon get a complete Aatmanirbhar 4G network, and the first call in this network is likely to be made on August 15, said IIT Madras Director V Kamakoti. It is a necessity to bring a network to the country which is completely indigenous and aatmanirbhartha is very important in today’s context, he said.
The foundation for the Aatmanirbhar network was laid on September 9, 2019 at a meeting in the office of the Principal Scientific Advisor Vijayaraghavan where a seminar was conducted on the topic ‘Can India build her own next-generation network? Within seven months, the Tata Consortium along with CDOT – a government organisation – Tejas Networks and a few startups have put now together a completely indigenous Aatmanirbhar 4G network, he said. Kamakoti was delivering the keynote address on a panel discussion on Technology Trends – Implications for India, organised by the Chennai International Centre.
“Everything, including the software and hardware in the network is ours, and completely commercially available off-the-shelf. If everything goes perfect, on August 15, we will do our first call on the network. This is going to be the basic building block for next-generation India. We are going to have BharatNet and the end-mile connectivity using mobile can be solved through this network. The 4G network can be upgraded to a 5G network. The BSNL would be the first to provide 5G network in the country. This will be a feather in the cap for the Aatmanirbhar mission,” he said.
“On 5G, for the first time we have gone in to Third Generation Project Partnership and have one Indian standard on top of it. This 5Gi technology will double the reach of the mobile tower; reduce the amount of electronic waste (towers) and power consumption by half,” said Kamakoti.
IndOS, IndStore
Under Aatmanirbhar, an IndOS (mobile OS), an IndStore (mobile store); a complete database for the country and a complete fab are going to be the defining technologies or building blocks that will make India a technology leader, he said.
Ravichandran Purushothaman, President, Danfoss India, saidtechnology has truly become a resource liberating force globally. For example, solar energy costi 4-5 times higher than coal 20 years ago. Today, it is just one-fifth of coal., he said
K Ananth Krishnan, CTO, Tata Consultancy Services, said IT is absolutely essential from the boardroom to the shop floor to the end-customer and back. The next stage is Artificial Intelligence-enabled enterprise, and in the next ten years every industry is going to use this technology, he said.
Lakshmi Narayanan, Chairman, ICT Academy, moderated the panel discussion.
