Rise of the homegrown telecom infrastructure

Telecom infrastructure, once led by US and European designs and made in China, iS Now increasingly designed and manufactured in India, marking a pivotal shift

- VERNIKA AWAL

In 2023, the Centre announced that Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), the government-owned telecom operator, will soon deploy a completely Indigenous technology stack for its operational telecom network. Now nearing completion, the move has highlighted why building Indigenous telecommunications infrastructure is key for India going forward.

But before delving into the necessity of indigenous telecommunications infrastructure, it is essential to understand the overall telecom industry. Most telecommunications networks require core infrastructure to work in any geography. With communications emerging as a critical service in any nation worldwide and the balance of currently prevalent global geopolitics, this core infrastructure is highly sensitive.

This service's sensitivity comes from the fact that personal data is one of the most valuable common currencies in the world today. A nation's communications network's failure to remain secure can enable foreign entities to hack into it, spread misinformation, and cause endless chaos in everyday use cases.

ENTER, MADE IN INDIA EQUIPMENT

India's largest technology services outsourcing firm, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), procured a deal from BSNL in 2023 to deploy a 4G network for the incumbent telco.

The USD 1.83-billion deal, one of the largest telecom deployment deals in IT services over the past two years, involved indigenisation of network technology using solutions from the group company Tejas Networks.