India’s indigenously developed 4G and 5G technology stacks have been successfully tested to handle 10 million simultaneous calls, Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has said.

Speaking at the inaugural Business 20 (B20) event in Gandhinagar on Monday, Vaishnaw said India will roll out its own 4G and 5G telecom technology stacks this year across the country and offer it to the world in 2024.

“Our private and public partnership approach has given us a solution where the core was developed, invested by the public sector, public funds, and everything else sitting on it comes from the private partners. In this entire 2023, we will be rolling it out on about 50,000-70,000, towers, sites and then in 2024 will be offering it to the world,” Vaishnaw said.

The Minister said only five countries in the world currently have end-to-end 4G-5G technology stacks. He also announced that India Stack, a set of open APIs and digital public goods that are a vehicle for social and financial inclusion, are now being offered to the world in the spirit of social service.

The Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), an autonomous body of the Department of Telecommunications has created the full stack of sophisticated 5G equipment, which includes fully indigenous non-standalone (NSA) core, radio, antennas and a Radio Access Network (RAN).

The Minister presented four approaches on economic management, digital economy, and regulation in new technologies that India has taken recently to maintain its relatively high growth rate in difficult times.

B20 speak

The Business 20 (B20) is the official G20 dialogue forum with the global business community. Set up in 2010, B20 is among the most prominent engagement groups in G20, with companies and business organisations as participants. The B20 leads the process of galvanising global business leaders for their views on issues of global economic and trade governance and speaks in a single voice for the entire G20 business community.

Speaking at the event, Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran said sustainability, energy transition, mobility, biodiversity, water management and UN SDGs will be focused upon. Chandrasekaran has been appointed by the government as the Chair of B20 India. He will lead the business agenda during India’s G20 Presidency. He also pushed for broadening collaboration between the G20 nations and India on innovation and research.

The Confederation of Indian Industry has been appointed the B20 India Secretariat by the government, which took charge on December 1, 2022.

CII President Sanjiv Bajaj stressed India’s efforts to represent the issues relevant to the global economy includes the focused agenda on Integration of Africa which will dispense a wide range of benefits, not only for African economies, but also for societies and businesses at large.

The government has kept issues relevant to Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in the forefront at G20. Bajaj said India’s B20 has focused on inclusive global revival through the financing for global economic recovery agenda.