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/