Minister of State for Communications Dr Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani today said that India has connected every district with 5G through almost 5.6 lakh Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) and villages with 4G and developed its own indigenous 4G stack over the past 5 years.

He said this while addressing a roundtable titled “Shaping the Intelligent Infrastructure for 6G on the side-lines of IMC 2026. The Minister further noted that nearly 136 research and development projects, worth approximately 5 hundred crore rupees, have been funded under the Telecom Technology Development Fund (TTDF). He said that these projects are working on 5G, 6G, quantum communications, non-terrestrial networks, advanced optical systems, indigenous core and telecom security. Outlining the priorities ahead, Dr Pemmasani called for identifying 10-20 critical network technologies currently being imported and for developing Indian alternatives, particularly in component manufacturing, chipsets, radios, routers and optical systems.

He highlighted the target of securing at least 10 percent of global 6G patents and standards and called for major telecom operators to have measurable annual and quarterly targets for contributions to standards, standard-essential patents (SEPs) and university research, along with industry collaboration. Dr Pemmasani underlined that the last decade was Digital India and the Government aims to make the next decade an Intelligent India.