NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch BSNL’s Swadeshi 4G ‘network stack’ on September 27, making India one of the few countries that manufacture their own telecom equipment, alongside Denmark, Sweden, South Korea, and China.This launch is a major milestone for India’s telecom sector and digital infrastructure.
97,500 indigenous 4G towers
Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said over 97,500 mobile 4G towers will be commissioned by the PM at Jharsuguda. Of these, more than 92,600 towers installed by BSNL use fully indigenised 4G technology, which is 5G upgradable.“This is a new era for the telecom sector, an era where India has entered into the domain of top countries, which produce and manufacture telecom equipment, including Denmark, Sweden, South Korea, China…India is now the fifth country. This big change in attitude, change in goals was pushed, pioneered and catalysed by the PM,” Scindia said, as quoted by PTI.The indigenous 4G tech stack features:
- Radio Access Network (RAN): Developed by Tejas Network
- Core Network: Developed by
C-DOT - Integration: By Tata Consultancy Services
Expanding 4G coverage to remote village
In addition to BSNL, Reliance Jio Infocomm and Bharti Airtel have installed over 4,700 4G towers. Under the Digital Bharat Nidhi saturation project, 14,180 towers have been set up to cover 26,700 unconnected villages in remote, border, and left-wing extremism-affected areas.“These towers will serve over two million new subscribers and support e-governance, digital payments, online education, telemedicine, and other citizen-centric applications,” the communications minister said.
5G upgrade capability
Scindia highlighted the network’s readiness for future upgrades: “The India-made network is cloud-based, future-ready and can upgrade seamlessly to 5G. Having perfected 4G, we will be moving towards converting that to 5G as well. Our 4G towers and BTSs are already serving 22 million customers across the length and breadth of our country.”“Today is an important day heralding, in 24 hours, the emergence of India on the global telecom footprint, not only as a service provider to 1.2 billion customers…with the cheapest call rates and the cheapest data rate at 11 cents/GB in the world, but also tomorrow will be the day when the world will awake to India having arrived not only as a service provider, but as a manufacturer and an equipment provider of full 4G stack,” Scindia added, as quoted by PTI.PM Modi will also launch India’s 100 per cent 4G saturation network through Digital Bharat Nidhi, connecting 29,000–30,000 villages in a mission-mode project.
