A working group has been constituted by the department of telecommunications to prepare a perspective plan for the telecom sector in the 12th Plan. The group has endorsed the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s recommendations on manufacturing telecom products. The Trai seeks to dramatically increase the percentage of systems designed, developed and manufactured in India by 2020. At present, this percentage is 3%. Another 10% products are manufactured in India under technology transfer. The remaining 87%, or almost all high-tech products, is imported.

The Trai envisaged that the products designed in India, that is, whose IPR resides in the country, should comprise 50% of the equipment inducted in the network by 2020. Since telecom systems like 3G and 4G are software-intensive, containing millions of lines of source code written in low level languages like C & C+, it will be virtually impossible to fully debug them in a certification centre. It is like looking for a needle in a haystack. For operators, these systems are like a black box. They totally rely on foreign suppliers even for maintenance.

A spyware or malware can always be hidden in the core network and can be activated in times of crises, or for monitoring important calls. That is why the ministry of home affairs also wants at least 50% of the network equipment to be based on indigenous hardware and software technology. But boosting the figure of 3% to 50%, almost 17 times, in this decade appears an impossible task, going by the experience of telecom R&D over the last 50 years, unless radical policy initiatives are taken during the 12thplan period.

India was perhaps the first developing country to start a Telecom Research Centre (TRC) as early as 1950 under the erstwhile post & telegraph department. The TRC initiated, in 1965, a R&D programme to indigenously develop a computer-controlled electronic switching system (ESS). This programme was started almost in parallel with a similar programme at the world famous Bell Labs, which was the research arm of American Telegraph & Telephones (AT&T). In the emerging field of microwave transmission also, work was started in the early 1960s. However, both projects were inordinately delayed and failed to meet the reliability standards of networking. The DOT, which was directly providing telecom services as a government monopoly, was forced to import ESSs and microwave systems in early 1980s, to modernise the infamous Indian telecom network.

By early 1980s, the need to create a separate R&D organisation, with greater flexibility in decision making, was evident to the policy makers. Sam Pitroda who held a number of patents in USA and happened to visit the country, gave a presentation to the then Prime Minister on the subject in 1984, and convinced her of the need to create an autonomous society for R&D under the joint control of the ministry of communications and the department of electronics. Thanks to his efforts, a government-funded R&D institution, called C-DOT, was created in mid-1984 and the TRC staff was absorbed in the new organisation.

In 1984, C-DOT undertook to develop a large-capacity digital switching system (DSS) within three years, i.e by 1987. However, it delivered the first large capacity (40,000 lines) main automatic exchange (MAX) only in 1993-94. However, as a by-product, it could develop an innovative small capacity exchange for rural application called RAXs (rural automatic exchanges). These small capacity (128/256/512 lines) exchanges were extensively deployed in rural areas in the 1990s. They were instrumental in extending the telecom network to the remotest corners of the country.

However, C-DOT?s entire effort was directed towards the development of digital switching systems (DSS) for fixed networks (PSTN) in the 1980s and early 1990s, when MNCs had already developed mega-switches (100,000 lines with an ability to handle millions of calls) for the fixed network and were mainly focusing their efforts in developing cellular mobile networks, employing first analogue (in the 1980s) and thereafter digital systems (in the 1990s) based on AMPS, NMT, GSM, CDMA & PDC standards developed in the USA, Europe and Japan.

It is relevant here that Japan commissioned the world?s first cellular mobile network in 1979, based on an indigenous standard and its own hardware/software technology, beating even the USA. AT&T could complete its cellular trial only in 1982. In Europe, systems (NMT) developed by Ericsson of Sweden were deployed in Nordic countries and the UK by 1984. Looking back, C-DOT?s adventure to develop switching & transmission systems for fixed networks (PSTNs) in late 1980s was a strategic mistake, from which it has never recovered. None of its products for PSTN are being manufactured in a mass scale. The manufacture of RAXs and MAXs have been phased out. Even state-run ITI is interested in making mobile systems for cellular mobile network operators.

The author is a former member, Trai /Telecom Commission. The second part of this article would appear in the next issue.