As of now, the government has collected around Rs 80,000 crore under the USOF, now renamed as Digital Bharat Nidhi.
According to the survey, the Telecommunications Technology Development Fund, formulated for 2022, has seen strong participation from start-ups, SMEs, academia and industry. Photo: ShutterstockPress Trust of India New Delhi
The government has decided to allocate 5 per cent of the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) for research and development in communication technology, it was said in the Economic Survey 2023-24 tabled in Parliament on Monday.
Currently, the government has around Rs 8 trillion raised under the USOF, which has now been renamed Digital Bharat Nidhi.
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“The development of communications technologies requires significant patient capital for research, development and commercialisation. To address this, the government has decided to allocate 5 per cent of annual revenues from the Universal Service Obligation Fund to fund research and development in the communications sector,” the study said.
According to the survey, the Telecommunications Technology Development Fund formulated for 2022 has seen strong participation from start-ups, SMEs, academia and industry.
According to the study, the government will dedicate a “5G testbed” in the country in 2022, providing end-to-end testing facilities to enable research and development (R&D) teams from Indian academia and industry to validate products, prototypes, algorithms, and demonstrate various services.
The survey also mentioned the government’s efforts to develop technology for 6G services.
Based on the recommendations of the Technology Innovation Group on 6G, the “Bharat 6G Vision” document was released in March 2023 for developing and deploying 6G network technology in India.
The preparation of the 6G vision document also led to the establishment of the Bharat 6G Mission and the formation of an apex council that will lay down phased targets for the 6G mission.
“The Bharat 6G Alliance was also launched in July 2023 as a collaborative platform of public and private companies, academia, research institutes and standards development organisations to enable India to become a leading global supplier of IP, products and solutions for affordable 5G, 6G and other future communication solutions,” the study said.
The report noted that India’s global ranking for mobile broadband speeds will improve from 118th to 15th by March 2024.
India’s teledensity (number of telephones per 100 people) is expected to increase from 75.2% in March 2014 to 85.7% in March 2024, while the number of wireless telephone connections will be 1.165 billion as at the end of March 2024.
The survey said that 683,175 km of optical fibre cable (OFC) has been laid and a total of 2,06,709 gram panchayats have been connected under BharatNet phase I and II.
