The labs were announced in Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's budget speech this year to develop applications in various industries such as education, agriculture and healthcare.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday emphasized the need to strengthen sustainable and safe supply chains and manufacturing in India by launching a 5G usage lab for 100 educational institutions to develop applications in various sectors such as education, agriculture and healthcare.
He said that higher internet speed will make life easier and help in education, health, agriculture etc. "Both fast internet speed and availability are critical," he said at the Indian Mobile Congress (IMC), where he launched the labs announced in 2018. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's budget speech for this year. The Department of Telecommunications has created laboratories; the government will finance 80% of the investment costs and 100% of the operating costs during the next four years, according to hindustantimes.
Institutions including Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Information Technology, National Institutes of Technology and other engineering colleges contribute 20 percent of the capital cost of the laboratories.
Each laboratory has at least 10 faculty members and 50 students. At least five startups or micro, small and medium-sized enterprises are testing or developing solutions with each lab. Each laboratory must develop or test at least 10 products or solutions per year.
The laboratory equipment includes dedicated 5G infrastructure (medium band), 5G SIM cards, dongles, IoT gateway, router, application server, etc., which will be delivered from December. All the labs should be fully operational by March 2024, the official said on condition of anonymity.
In his speech at the IMC, Modi said that India is among the top three ecosystems in the world and the second largest producer of mobile phones. "Our electronics exports now exceed 2, 00, 000, 000," Modi said. He charted the development of telecom and digital infrastructure in India during his tenure. Modi also spoke about cyber security, saying threats to it were discussed at the G20 summit in New Delhi in September. "Having our entire value chain in India makes it easier to secure."
