South Asia and Beyond

Eye On Rural, India Setting Global Standards For 5G Tech: TSDSI Chief Bhaskar Ramamurthi

NEW DELHI: The fourth generation telephony focused mainly on urban areas, with coverage of the countryside being incidental, says Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, chairman of Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI). But 5G will be a leveller of sorts; rural areas will get carpet coverage and the same kind of broadband as urban areas, Prof. Ramamurthi, Director of IIT Madras, told StratNews Global Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale in an exclusive interview. The Radio Interface Technology (RIT) developed by TSDSI, which aims at enabling enhanced mobile connectivity in rural, remote and sparsely developed areas, is on the verge of being included as an International Mobile Telecommunications-2020 standard by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a UN body that had earlier adopted the Low-Mobility-Large-Cell (LMLC) use case proposed by TSDSI as a mandatory 5G requirement. As 5G involves huge security considerations, Indian companies must build the core network for India, he added.

Nitin A Gokhale WhatsApp Channel

Nitin A. Gokhale

Left to himself, Nitin A. Gokhale would rather watch films and sports matches but his day job as a media entrepreneur, communications specialist, analyst and author, leaves him little time to indulge in his primary interests. Gokhale in fact started his career in journalism in 1983 as a sports reporter. Since then he has, in the past 41 years, traversed the entire spectrum across print, broadcast and digital space. One of South Asia's leading strategic analysts, Gokhale has moved on from conventional media to become an independent media entrepreneur running three niche digital platforms—BharatShakti, StratNewsGlobal and Interstellar—besides undertaking consultancy and training workshops in communications for military institutions, corporates and individuals. Now better known for his conflict coverage and strategic analyses, Gokhale has lived and reported from India’s North-east for 23 years between 1983 and 2006, been on the ground at Kargil in the summer of 1999 and also brought us live coverage from Sri Lanka’s Eelam War IV between 2006-2009.    An alumni of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Hawaii, Gokhale now writes, lectures and analyses security and strategic matters in Indo-Pacific and travels regularly to US, Europe, Australia, South and South-East Asia to take part in various seminars and conferences. Gokhale is also a popular visiting faculty at India’s Defence Services Staff College, the three war colleges, India's National Defence College, College of Defence Management and the IB’s intelligence school.

Related