The union minister of communications and development of the north eastern region, India and federal minister for digital transformation and government modernisation, Federal Republic of Germany, held a bilateral meeting on February 18, 2026, to advance cooperation in telecommunications and digital transformation under the broader Indo-German strategic partnership. The discussions reflected mutual respect and appreciation for each other’s technological achievements, with both ministers agreeing that the present times offer significant opportunity for deeper collaboration in telecom and emerging technologies.
The meeting assumes significance since it followed the signing of the joint declaration of intent (JDI) on January 10, 2026 during the India-Germany Summit, which establishes a forward-looking and non-binding framework for structured collaboration in telecommunications and digital governance under the broader Indo-German strategic partnership.
Both sides welcomed the JDI as an important milestone reflecting shared values of openness, trust, innovation, and resilience in digital ecosystems. The JDI provides a flexible platform for the exchange of best practices, policy dialogue, scientific and technical cooperation, and the formulation of joint work plans to translate shared intent into actionable initiatives.
The communications minister stressed that the partnership should move beyond broad statements of intent toward structured and results-oriented implementation. He shared India’s digital transformation journey, highlighting that India today has over 1.23 billion telecom subscribers and nearly a billion internet users. 5G coverage extends to approximately 99.9 per cent of the districts, supported by data tariffs averaging around $0.10 per GB, making connectivity widely accessible and affordable.
He underscored that India has laid a robust digital carriageway that offers significant avenues for international collaboration. He highlighted the availability of affordable voice and data tariffs, which are among the lowest globally, and underscored India’s success in building digital public infrastructure. In particular, he referred to the transformative impact of unified payments interface, which has scaled globally as a model for interoperable digital payments.
Further, the German minister expressed appreciation for India’s technological achievements and conveyed Germany’s interest in structured and forward-looking collaboration in advanced telecom systems, digital governance, and secure networks. He shared Germany’s experience in quantum encryption and secure information transport, including a demonstration of quantum communication over a 35 kilometres link for 11 consecutive days. The German minister underlined the importance of being actively engaged with India to harness the full potential of 6G technologies.
The two sides discussed early convening of the first high-level meeting under the JDI framework to finalise an initial two-year work plan, identify priority focus areas, and launch flagship collaborative initiatives, with emphasis on clearly defined timelines, identification of stakeholders for each priority area, and periodic virtual review meetings to ensure outcome-driven implementation.
Furthermore, India and Germany reaffirmed their commitment to strengthening cooperation across emerging domains, including 5G/5G- Advanced, early engagement on 6G standardisation, network modernisation, trusted telecom architectures, and supply chain resilience, including collaboration on secure and sovereign 6G networks, artificial intelligence (AI) at the edge, industry-grade network slicing, and scalable deployment models. The German side expressed keen interest in fully harnessing the potential of 6G through closer engagement with India. Both sides emphasised the importance of coordinated engagement in international fora, including the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), to promote interoperable and secure global telecom standards.
Institutional collaboration between research and innovation entities was noted as a strong pillar of the partnership, with recognition of Germany’s strong industry-academia model and the need for deeper structured engagement between research institutions and industry stakeholders. The ongoing cooperation between the Centre for Development of Telematics and the Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz Institute, including collaboration in advanced telecom research and development, quantum communications, AI, and next-generation network technologies, was acknowledged as a model, alongside opportunities for engagement in indigenous technology development, open-source innovation networks, and open radio access network (Open RAN) ecosystems.
Both sides recognised that 6G, Open RAN, 5G use case, quantum communication, AI in telecom, and cyber security are important areas of cooperation to collaborate through industry and academia by exchanging best practices, building capacity, and industry linkages.
Moreover, the Indian side sought Germany’s support for India’s candidature for director, Radiocommunication Bureau at the ITU, for India’s re-election to the ITU Council for the term 2027-2030, and for India’s proposal to host the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in 2030.
