The emergency cell broadcasting service (CBS) to send alerts to telecom users has “already resumed” for extreme weather events and natural disasters in India, the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT)’s CEO Rajkumar Upadhyay told The Hindu last month in an interview ahead of the organisation’s 43rd foundation day.
the Union government has charged the body with coming up with domestically manufactured alternatives to telecom gear While C-DOT is known for enabling rural telephone exchanges in the last century. “I say: when you construct a building, you lay the basement, then the ground floor, then the first floor … We consciously started at 4G — which is exactly why converting to 5G, then 6G, becomes much faster. However, telecom gear is dominated by a handful of firms; ZTE, Huawei, Nokia and Ericsson, along with Samsung, account for the majority of telecom gear makers. Upadhyay pointed out, highlighting the barriers to reaching the frontier in telecom research with true sovereignty. “The terms [of these SEPs being shared with other vendors] is supposed to be fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory, but that’s only on paper; 3GPP [the standards body for mobile generations] has no obligation to mediate, so it ends up in court. Mr. “In 6G everybody is at the same place — so India may actually have a chance, if all the stakeholders — industry, academia, government — go to 3GPP cohesively, as a country. If I don’t, I’m not at the table.”
The 6G vision says: get at least 10% of the IPR. If I hold 10%, I’m at the table.
“People ask, wasn’t it foolish to do 4G in 2020,” Mr. Upadhyay said, referring to C-DOT’s mandate to build gear for BSNL’s 4G rollout. Those firms’ positions are bolstered by so-called “standard-essential patents (SEPs),” which are proprietary technology baked into 4G and 5G standards itself that require royalties to be paid out for competing technologies. “Anyone implementing the standard has to pay the holder,” Mr. Upadhyay said that India would need to build research and development to a much stronger level. He said he was optimistic that with C-DOT’s work and the catch-up in India’s telecom deployment, the policy space for indigenisation would open up. “”In 4G we were 10 years behind; in 5G about four years,” Mr. Upadhyay said.
