India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has launched a 6G (six-generation wireless technology) alliance to drive innovation and open research and development initiatives for the next generation of mobile technology that is expected to build on the current fifth-generation mobile telephony (5G) standard.
The new generation cellular network, which is expected to be available around 2030, will operate in untapped radio frequencies and use technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) to enable high-speed, low-latency communication at speeds almost 100 times faster than current 5G standards.
The Bharat 6G Alliance (B6GA) will primarily work to understand the business and societal needs of 6G beyond technical requirements, aligning start-ups, corporations and the manufacturing sector “to drive the design, development and deployment of 6G” in India.
It is a collaborative platform of public and private companies, academia, research institutions, and Standards development organisations to foster international collaboration and knowledge exchange, the DoT said.
The Indian initiative was in line with other global initiatives like the Next G Alliance in the US, the EU 6G alliance and state-backed initiatives in China. Singapore's own 6G lab was set up in September last year.
India’s Communications Minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said that India has acquired over 200 patents of 6G technology so far. “We should now keep a minimum target that 10 percent of the 6G IPR (intellectual property rights) are from India by the time we reach 2029 or 2030,” he added.
India is planning to build a 6G THz (Terahertz) Testbed with Orbital Angular Momentum(OAM) & Multiplexing and Advance Optical Communication Test Bed through a consortium of India’s elite institutions and companies like Signalchip Innovations, Signaltron Systems, Sterlite Technologies Limited and many more.
The B6GA will involve 75 companies and is backed by two government grants to create technology testbeds, DoT said.
The government is also aiming to accelerate standards-related patent creation and eventually launch the 6G network by 2030.
It had earlier launched a vision document for 6G services, highlighting the roadmap to the launch of 6G services including recommendations from task forces, financial support required for projects and the opening of spectrum bands.
