Indian state-owned telco Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), Tata Consultancy Services, the Center for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) and Tejas Networks unveiled on Saturday India’s first indigenously developed 4G stack.
The cloud-based Bharat Telecom Stack was spearheaded by TCS, which integrated C-DOT’s EPC core network technology with Tejas’s base stations and radio infrastructure at 100,000 sites. TCS also established data centres for the project and supplied its Cognitive Network Operations (TCS CNOPS) platform for 24/7 real-time network management.
TCS said the Bharat Telecom Stack project – which complies with 3GPP standards – was completed within two years, with the stack fully integrated into BSNL’s existing 2G/3G network infrastructure.
According to the Economic Times, the stack has been installed in 97,500 4G towers built by BSNL, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel covering 26,700 previously unconnected villages, giving over 22 million people access to affordable 4G services. All of those towers are upgradable to 5G, the report said.
The launch of the Bharat 4G stack also serves as a milestone for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push to make India more self-reliant in technology development and establish the country as a global telecoms manufacturing hub.
N Ganapathy Subramaniam, advisor for telecom strategic initiatives at TCS and chairman of Tejas Networks, said India is now the fifth country in the world (after Finland, Sweden, South Korea and China) to have built a self-reliant, indigenous telecom technology stack supporting 4G and beyond.
“We are proud that we have put India on the map of only a handful of countries to have developed a comprehensive, trusted and software upgradable telecom technology stack,” he said in a statement.
“This 'Made in Bharat’ stack, brought to life by the relentless dedication of Team BSNL, secures our digital future and ensures that the fruits of connectivity empower every citizen, bridging the digital divide like never before,” added BSNL’s CMD Robert J Ravi.
The arrival of the Bharat Telecom Stack also means BSNL can finally launch 4G services. The telco soft-launched its 4G service in Delhi last month using a 4G-as-a-service model through a partner.
