T.V. Ramachandran, Hon. FIET (London)

India’s ambition to become a developed nation by 2047 is closely linked to the evolution of our digital infrastructure from being merely a tool of connectivity to a vibrant catalyst of capability. We must grow all links together – fibre, towers, satcom, Wi-Fi, data centres, submarine cables, CLS, quantum and beyond, and nothing to be done in silos.

Shift in the mindset: From expansion to bedrock architecture

For too long, the national conversation around digital growth has centred on coverage, that is, on kilometres of fibre laid or towers erected. India’s goal is not to simply “connect” its people, but to architect a digital backbone through self-reliance in strategic areas. This new paradigm recognises that true digital progress lies in two north-star metrics – parity and sovereignty.

Parity would mean ensuring speed, latency, uptime, accessibility and affordability converge for rural/urban, gender minorities and people with disabilities. If these are not at satisfactory grade for all segments of the population, then, surely some sections would be either excluded or lagging in socio-economic development of the nation. We need digital infrastructure everywhere that guarantees universal indoor quality of experience (QoE) and affordability, closing historical divides through design, not afterthought.

Moreover, sovereignty would be built when progress occurs on the bedrock of local innovation and indigenous research and development (R&D). The more significantly we grow domestic shares in semiconductors, cloud/data centres, satellites and undersea systems through the promotion of indigenous innovation, the closer we get towards our ambition of a digitally sovereign future and global leadership. Fundamentally, India needs to invest far more on R&D to be able to develop adequate traction in the international arena. If one examines the intensity of the gross R&D spend as a percentage of the country’s GDP, India’s R&D intensity is much below that of the other prominent nations, as is evident from Table 1.

Even if one looks at PPP-adjusted of national R&D outlays (GERD), with everything aligned to 2022, to PPP dollars to ensure an apple-to-apple comparison, the results are mostly similar.

As can be seen in Table 2, that even with the PPP adjustment, India is far behind other major nations such as the US, China, Germany and the UK. Unless this is addressed effectively, it might be difficult to achieve the desired degree of sovereignty in the digital sectors targeted.

Infrastructure as the main supporting layer

Infrastructure is no longer a passive pipe but the primary layer that will determine capability and become the base of development for other industries. India’s tower sites are already powered and increasingly fiberised should be upgraded as micro-edge data nodes to serve 5G, IoT and smart-city workloads, bringing the compute activity closer to citizens and enterprises. In parallel, Wi-Fi must be treated as a neutral, complementary access layer for affordable indoor and public connectivity. The availability of such a layer becomes a dire necessity due to the evolution of higher generation mobile technologies based on higher frequency spectrum. Further, viability gap funding should be provided to explicitly support intelligent, edge-enabled sites and high-density small-cell grids.

To keep operations sustainable, operations must be energy-efficient by design with a time-bound roadmap toward carbon-free towers. Recognising infrastructure developers as core service partners—rather than passive suppliers—will be key to last-mile delivery and true inclusion.

With collaboration as the norm and sustainability as a requirement, India can build a seamless, intelligent, future-ready ecosystem that is globally competitive and domestically transformative.

Shared infrastructure and multi-layer resilience

Lowering cost and shortening deployment cycles will hinge on shared assets, such as common ducts, dark fibre, neutral-host in-building systems and co-located towers under a “neutral-host by default” policy, where sharing is the rule rather than the exception. Building on that, the ecosystem would move faster with multi-function telecom towers that support EV charging, public alerts, emergency broadcasting systems, IoT sensors and renewable energy storage, while composite/GRP structures enable rapid, off-grid roll-outs in remote areas. This would support and enable other sectors and industries as well.

None of this can be scaled without right-of-way facilitation. Stakeholders across industries demand fast-tracked, single-window approvals and mandatory fibre-ready building norms. In parallel, resilience must be engineered from the start such as ring topologies, route diversity, quantum-safe protocols for critical rails (financial, health, governmental), and hardening of subsea infrastructure, so that the network is protected against failure and attack.

Accessibility, skilling and human capital

Accessibility and affordability must be integrated into planning and so “design-for-all” should be the default for infrastructure planning.

The importance of comprehensive initiatives focused on digital literacy, network ops, cybersecurity and AI-ops, with special incentives for talent placement in rural locations, were highlighted along with positioning infrastructure projects as vehicles for employment generation, spanning design, deployment, operations and analytics.

A phased journey to 2047

Industry leaders envision a clear, three-phase journey.

  • 2025-2030: The foundation phase – Aggressive fibre roll-out, public Wi-Fi scale-up, district-level edge nodes and governance set-up through the National Digital Infrastructure Council.
  • 2030-2040: The capability phase – AI-native and energy-efficient networks, satellite-terrestrial integration, quantum-safe technologies and diversified subsea systems.
  • 2040-2047: The leadership phase – Universal parity in network experience, carbon-neutral infrastructure and export of Indian digital solutions to the world.

The journey to Viksit Bharat @ 2047 is not about faster networks alone; it is also about a smarter, fairer and stronger nation, built on the strength of its own digital foundations. In fact, it would probably be more appropriate to describe it as the mission to evolve to a more advanced digital civilisation. India’s digital infrastructure must be inclusive by design, resilient by architecture and sovereign by intent.

(Author assisted by Sundeep Kathuria, Consultant and Shubhika Saluja, Policy & Communications, BIF)