ITI Limited & IESA sign MoU to develop 5G village in India

Bengaluru: In a situation where the government is looking for some viable solutions for the revival of the ailing telecom PSUs BSNL and MTNL, another government-owned telecommunications equipment manufacturer PSU, ITI Limited, has a bit of good news. ITI Limited has informed that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with India Electronics & Semiconductor Association (IESA) on Thursday, to develop a one of a kind 5G village in India, and to strengthen the electronics system design and manufacturing (ESDM) ecosystem in the country at-large.

The MoU has been signed by ITI Limited's General Manager (Projects & Planning) KV Suresh and IESA's Board Member & Advisor, Anil Kumar Muniswamy. On the occasion, ITI Limited's Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) RM Agarwal, Director (HR) SP Gupta, IESA's Executive Council, senior officials from ITI Limited and senior officials from Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and members from IESA were also present.

What is in the MoU?

Under the MoU, ITI will provide its infrastructure to manufacture electronic products with special focus on telecom and allied smart electronic products. The MoU envisages setting up of infrastructure to enable ITI to develop intelligent electronics ecosystem in the country inclusive of product design, development and manufacturing with a focus not limited to areas such as Telecom, Internet of Things, Smart Cities, Smart Manufacturing, Smart Agriculture and others. IESA will be the exclusive knowledge and transformation partner for unlocking the value of in-house knowledge, technologies, expertise and of spareable, de-licensed, large physical infrastructure of ITI. The initiative will facilitate small and medium enterprises and start-ups to utilize ITI's existing infrastructure for prototyping, testing and certification purpose.

Highlighting the MoU tie-up, ITI Limited's CMD RM Agarwal said, "ITI has a long legacy for telecom equipment manufacturing in India. This initiative not only opens the door for small and medium enterprises but also enables them to reach out to the global market for their indigenous electronic products. The initiative exhibits ITI's commitment to the Government of India's flagship initiative like the Make in India and Smart City programmes".

The partnership also aims to set up a demo Assembly, Testing, Marking and Packaging (ATMP) line, as a first-of-its-kind facility in the country. The facility will host a training facility and support fabless startups in prototyping their designs and setting up of a Deeptech and Intelligent Electronics Park through a mix of co-working and independent office, lab, workspaces and ITI's existing physical, knowledge infrastructure. The electronic park will also have an Experience Zone for emerging solutions in areas such as smart cities, smart agriculture, smart healthcare among others for startups, companies in these domains to showcase their latest offerings.

5G Village

One of the flagship activities under the MoU is to create a first of its kind 5G Village at ITI premise that will focus on design, development, prototyping, testing and manufacturing of 5G related and enabled equipment, devices, solutions for needs of the country. The 5G village will be equipped with Telepreneur Hub, Systems Innovation Lab, Systems Certification Lab, Radiated Application Testbeds and a Regulatory Sandbox.  The objective of the MoU is to build an intelligent electronics ecosystem in the country, promotion of make-in-India and Startup India initiatives.

Jitendra Chaddah, Chairman, IESA and Senior Director, Strategy & Operations, Intel India said "IESA is deeply committed to developing India as a global hub for design-led manufacturing in Intelligent Electronics through its continued partnership with the Industry, Government and Academia. Working towards this goal, we are excited to partner with ITI to accelerate innovation and strengthen the hardware startup& electronic systems design and manufacturing ecosystem in India".