Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday (5 October) virtually inaugurated Nokia's new '6G Lab' in India.

"The first-of-its-kind project aims to accelerate the development of fundamental technologies and innovative use cases underpinned by 6G technology that will address the future needs of both industry and society," Nokia said in a statement.

Nokia said that its 6G lab supports the government of India’s ‘Bharat 6G Vision,’ introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that envisions a key global role for India in the standardisation, development, and implementation of 6G technology.

The Lab will function as a platform for collaboration for industry stakeholders and facilitate the testing of innovative solutions while establishing their potential for commercialisation, it said.

The company said that the experts at its Bengaluru centre will support India’s ambition to make notable contributions towards global 6G technology standards

Further, the company said that it is in the process of building research collaborations with premier research institutes in India like IISc/IITs to further scale up the 6G research initiative in India

The Lab includes a setup to research ‘Network as a Sensor’ technology that enables the network to sense objects, people and movement without the need for on-board sensors.

"In the 6G era, ’Network as a Sensor’ has been identified as a key enabling technology that supports the vision of bringing the digital and physical worlds together. Sensing will be fully integrated into the wireless network and operate simultaneously with communication services," Nokia said in its statement.

In addition to its focus on 'Network as a Sensor', Nokia's 6G Lab in India will also serve as an experimental platform for researching algorithms, privacy, and sustainable system design.

Nokia is already engaged in several global projects and regional initiatives with industry peers, customers, academia, and research institutions for 6G development. This work aims to form a common view and direction for 6G, including 6G Hexa-X and Hexa-X-II, the first and second phase of the European 6G Flagship.

Nokia is a founding member of the Next G Alliance, a group dedicated to advancing the 6G ecosystem in North America. They are also involved in coordinating the German Lighthouse project 6G ANNA.

“The inauguration of the Nokia 6G research lab in Bengaluru today is another step towards PM Narendra Modi’s vision of making India an innovation hub. Interesting use cases coming out of this lab will be related to transportation safety, health care and education which will be another big contribution in the entire Digital India suite," said Telecom Minister Vaishnaw.