In a bid to promote development of indigenous technologies and products, the government has offered the 5G test beed free of cost to recognised start-ups and MSMEs up to January 2024, according to an official release.

"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," the Ministry of Communications said in a release on Monday (27 February).

Further, the ministry added that all 5G stakeholders including industry, academia, service providers, R&D institutions, government bodies, equipment manufacturers etc., can utilise this facility at a very nominal rate.

The move, according to the ministry, will encourage 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 using the test bed for testing their products and services, it said.

In March 2018, the DoT had approved a financial grant of Rs 224 crore for a collaborative project between eight institutes, including IIT Madras, IIT Delhi, and IIT Hyderabad, to set up an Indigenous 5G Test Bed in India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi dedicated the Indigenous 5G Test Bed to the nation on 17 May 2022.

The Test Bed is available at five locations, including IIT Delhi, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Kanpur, IIT Madras, and IISc Bangalore. It provides complete access for research teams to work on novel concepts/ideas that have potential for standardisation in India and on a global scale. Additionally, it offers facilities for 5G networks to experiment and demonstrate the importance of applications and use cases for Indian society, like rural broadband, smart city applications, and intelligent transport systems.

The end-to-end test bed is compliant 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 standardisation in India and on global scale.

Additionally, it offers the facilities of 5G networks for experimenting and demonstrating applications/use cases of importance to Indian society like rural broadband, smart city applications and intelligent transport system (ITS).

Besides, it also helps Indian operators to understand the working of 5G technologies and plan their future networks.

According to the ministry, the development of this Indigenous Test Bed is a key milestone step for India’s becoming self-reliant in the 5G Technology domain.

The 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, the ministry said, that this has resulted in huge cost efficiency and reduced design time due to which Indian 5G products are likely to become market competitive globally.

The development of this Test Bed has also resulted into development of many 5G Technologies/IPs which are available for technology transfer to industry players which will facilitate the industry players for smooth and speedy deployment of 5G in India, the ministry said.