Centre offers 5G Test Bed free of cost to recognised startups and MSMEs

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has offered the usage of 5G test bed free of cost to the Start-ups and MSMEs recognised by the Government of India up to January 2024, the Ministry of Communications said in a statement.

Prior to this, the indigenous 5G test bed was available free of cost to government-recognised startups and MSMEs up till January 2023.

“All 5G stakeholders i.e. industry, academia, service providers, R&D institutions, govt. bodies, equipment manufacturers etc. can utilise this facility at a very nominal rate,” the Ministry of Communication said.

“This is being announced in order to encourage usage of the Test Bed and give a fillip to the development of indigenous technologies/ products in line with ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ vision. Several start-ups and companies are already using the Test Bed for testing their products and services,” it added.

In March 2018, keeping in view India’s specific requirements and to take lead in 5G deployment, the DoT approved a financial grant for the multi-institute collaborative project to set up an ‘Indigenous 5G test bed’ in India with a total cost of ₹224 crore.

The eight collaborating institutes in the project were IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Madras, IIT Delhi, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Bombay, IIT Kanpur, IISc Bangalore, Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering and Research (SAMEER) and Centre of Excellence in Wireless Technology (CEWiT).

The Indigenous 5G test bed was dedicated to the nation by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 17 May 2022.

The development of this Indigenous test bed is a key milestone step for India becoming self-reliant in the 5G technology domain and now leading towards 5G Aatmanirbhar Bharat.

The 5G test bed is available at five locations: Integrated test bed at CEWiT/ IIT Madras and other test beds are at IIT Delhi, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Kanpur and IISc Bangalore. CEWiT/ IIT Madras offers end-to-end test bed with various testing services for RAN Level, PHY Level, andf others, and other test equipment. IIT Hyderabad has facilities for gNB Testing, UE Testing, end-to-end interoperability testing and NB-IoT testing, while IISC Bangalore hosts the V2X and 5G open-source test bed, IIT Kanpur hosts the base-band test bed and IIT Delhi hosts the NB-IoT and VLC test bed.