The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is likely to adopt the Chinese development model to utilise funds worth Rs 17 billion to boost indigenous manufacturing of telecom equipment in the country.
At present, DoT is examining the views submitted by country?s leading educational institutes including Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad regarding encouraging innovation in the country?s domestic telecom equipment manufacturing market. According to the faculty members of these institutes China has helped the country?s local telecom companies to generate a majority of the intellectual property rights (IPR) through proactive funding by supporting research and development (R&D) and innovation in the industry.
Earlier, a DoT panel had developed the blueprint for creating three central telecom funds aggregating Rs 17 billion for promoting R&D, entrepreneurship development and product manufacturing in telecom industry. However, these funds continue to be unutilised and the department is looking at ways to operationalise these dormant funds to strengthen India?s local manufacturing ecosystem and its pool of telecom IPRs.
