PM Modi unveils India’s 6G vision document

New Delhi: India is gearing up to roll out high-speed 6G communication services by 2030 and has set up a Bharat 6G project to identify and fund research and deployment of the next-generation technology in the country, according to a vision document unveiled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday.

India’s 6G project will be implemented in two phases, and the government has also appointed an apex council to oversee the project and focus on issues such as standardization, identification of the spectrum for 6G usage, create an ecosystem for devices and systems, and figure out finances for research and development, among other things.

While, technically, 6G does not exist today, it has been conceived as a far superior technology promising internet speeds up to 100 times faster than 5G.

The apex council will facilitate and finance research and development, design and development of 6G technologies by Indian startups, companies, research bodies and universities. It will aim to enable India to become a leading global supplier of intellectual property, products and solutions of affordable 6G telecom solutions and identify priority areas for 6G research based on India’s competitive advantages.

A key focus of the council will be on new technologies such as Terahertz communication, radio interfaces, tactile internet, artificial intelligence for connected intelligence, new encoding methods and waveforms chipsets for 6G devices.

“Within 6 months of the rollout of 5G technology we are talking about 6G,” the prime minister said. This, he said, shows the confidence of the country. “Before 4G, India was only a user of telecom technology, but now India is moving fast to become a big exporter of telecom technology,” he added.

Modi formally launched 5G services in October 2022 and said at the time that India should be ready to launch 6G services in the next 10 years. As opposed to 5G, which at its peak can offer internet speeds up to 10 Gbps, 6G promises to offer ultra-low latency with speeds up to 1 Tbps.

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