Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday inaugurated the country’s first 5G testbed to enable startups and industry players to test and validate their products locally and reduce dependence on foreign facilities. The testbed has been set up at a cost of around Rs 220 crore. The Prime Minister said the 5G testbed is a significant step toward self-reliance in the direction of critical and modern technologies while speaking at the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s silver jubilee celebrations.
The 5G testbed has been developed as a multi-institute collaborative project by eight institutes led by IIT Madras. Because there was no 5G testbed in the United States, entrepreneurs and other industry players had to fly abroad to test and certify their products before they could be installed in a 5G network. IIT Delhi, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Bombay, IIT Kanpur, IISc Bangalore, Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering & Research (SAMEER), and Centre of Excellence in Wireless Technology were among the other institutions involved in the research.