The Ministry of Communications is expected to approve the first application of domestic companies seeking to secure localization R&D funds by January next year.
The new initiative, funded by the Universal Service Commitment Fund (USOF), will encourage regional research and development to create Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in India for telecommunications products and solutions. USOF is a Rs 60,000 crore reserve established in 2002 to provide financial assistance to connect disconnected people in rural and remote areas.
On October 1, the Department of Defense announced plans to establish the Telecommunications Technology Development Fund (TTDF), which will use 5% of the USOF annual fee to fund domestic research and development in the telecommunications sector starting in fiscal year 22.
“We have started receiving applications. So maybe in a month’s time, we’ll start processing them, I would say by January the first batch of applications would be approved”, DoT secretary K Rajaraman described.
This move will give Indian companies access to around Rs 500 million per year, which in turn will increase intellectual property creation, leading to design-based manufacturing in areas such as 5G, 5G advanced, 6G, satellite technology, and a lot of things. In addition to software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV), communications technologies, wireless backhaul, core, aggregation, and edge routers, Ethernet switches, and edge computing solutions.
Experts say the initiative will promote the development of technology ownership along with domestic production in the telecom sector, reducing imports and opening up export opportunities for Indian companies. Domestic companies, start-ups, consortia, academic institutions, and small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) specializing in communications technology and developing use cases can be helped by this initiative.
“We are calling for proposals currently, then there is a screening committee and an administrative committee. They include researchers, experts, and regulatory body members, and further, scrutinize the applications.” Rajaraman voiced.
The government is also working to ensure the adoption and commercialization and priority deployment of locally developed communications technologies and solutions, including initiatives administered by the USOF.
