The union telecom minister of India, Jyotiraditya Scindia, has said that India's indigenously developed 4G stack will help in achieving 100% mobile coverage, said a PTI report. At present, the coverage stands at 70-80% (in terms of citizens) and there are about 120 crore devices that are in use. BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) is deploying the indigenous 4G stack that comes from TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) led consortium including Tejas Networks and Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT).
The indigenous technology stack can be a huge win for India as it can be exported to other nations and be used by telecom operators who don't want to pay a premium to large vendors such as Huawei, Ericsson, and Nokia. The stack can also be used to upgrade to 5G at a later point by BSNL, which is great as it would allow the state-run telco to launch next-generation network services in a jiffy.
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Scindia recently shared that the government is looking to form a performance monitoring unit (PMU) to keep track of the daily 4G rollout from BSNL. The daily rollouts will be overseen by the telecom secretary and Scindia himself. BSNL has already launched indigenous 4G in over 1000 sites and is on track to reach its target of 1 lakh sites.
The estimated time that it will take for BSNL to deploy 4G in 1 lakh sites is around 1 or 1.5 years from now. The government also utilises USOF (Universal Service Obligation Fund) to spread network connectivity in rural places of the country.
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BSNL is all set to launch 4G networks in Chennai. Its 4G is already available in 19 villages in the Thiruvallur district. The state-run telecom operator is offering free 4G SIM cards to users in a bid to grow user base and also has the cheapest prepaid plans.
