PM to Unveil BSNL's Homegrown 4G Stack on Sep 27; India Leaps into Global League of Indigenous Tech

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will unveil on Saturday state-owned BSNL's 'Swadeshi' 4G stack, marking India's entry into a coveted league of nations such as Denmark, Sweden, South Korea, and China that produce and manufacture homegrown telecom equipment.

This is a new era for the telecom sector, Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia announced on Friday.

Scindia said that over 97,500 mobile 4G towers will be commissioned by the PM at Jharsuguda, Odisha, on September 27.

Over 92,600 mobile sites installed by Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) are of indigenised 4G technology, which is 5G upgradable. This is a fully-indigenous ‘4G tech stack' featuring a Radio Access Network (RAN) developed by Tejas Network, a core network by C-DOT and integrated by Tata Consultancy Services.

Further, more than 4,700 mobile 4G towers have been installed by both Reliance Jio Infocomm and Bharti Airtel and 14,180 mobile 4G towers under the 'saturation project' have been funded by Digital Bharat Nidhi, according to a release.

These towers cover 26,700 unconnected villages in remote, border, and left-wing extremism-affected areas and will be a strategic enabler for digital India, serving over two million new subscribers and powering a range of e-governance services, digital payments, online education, telemedicine and citizen-centric applications.

The India-made network is cloud-based, future-ready and can upgrade seamlessly to 5G, Scindia said. The minister will be in Guwahati for the launch.

"This is a new era for the telecom sector, an era where India has entered into the domain of top countries, which produce and manufacture telecom equipment, including Denmark, Sweden, South Korea, China...India is now the fifth country. This big change in attitude, change in goals was pushed, pioneered and catalysed by the PM," according to Scindia.

The Minister said, having perfected 4G, “we will be moving towards converting that to 5G as well".

"Our 4G towers and BTSs are already serving 22 million customers across the length and breadth of our country," he added.

The PM will also unveil India's 100% 4G saturation network through digital Bharat Nidhi, where 29,000-30,000 villages have been connected in a mission-mode project.

"Today is an important day heralding, in 24 hours, the emergence of India on the global telecom footprint, not only as a service provider to 1.2 billion customers...with the cheapest call rates and the cheapest data rate at 11 cents/GB in the world, but also tomorrow will be the day when the world will awake to India having arrived not only as a service provider, but as a manufacturer and an equipment provider of full 4G stack," Scindia said.