The Technology Advisory Group (TAG) of the Empowered Technology Group (ETG) convened its fourth meeting on 10 July 2026 under the chairmanship of Prof. Ajay Kumar Sood, Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India. The meeting focused on developing a strategic roadmap for India's telecom sector and establishing a dedicated "Communication Technology Task Force" to guide national priorities and strengthen ecosystem-wide coordination.
Prof. Sood emphasized that telecom technologies form the foundation of India's digital economy, enabling digital public infrastructure, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, industrial automation, and critical infrastructure. While noting India's emergence as one of the world's largest telecom markets, he stressed the need to build indigenous capabilities across the entire telecom value chain by strengthening research, standards, intellectual property, manufacturing, and commercialization.
Shri Amit Agarwal, Secretary of the Department of Telecommunications, highlighted India's vision for an integrated, future-ready telecom sector extending beyond traditional services to encompass data centers, non-terrestrial networks, space-based communications, and AI-native networks. He emphasized an ecosystem-led approach and informed participants about DoT's Digital Bharat Nidhi scheme, which provides opportunities to support research, innovation, and early deployment of indigenous technologies.
Dr Parag Agrawal, Deputy Director General of Telecom Technology Development Fund (TTDF), emphasized leveraging India's strong market potential to develop indigenous capabilities in strategic areas including 5G-Advanced/6G, AI-native networks, Open RAN, satellite communications, cloud-native networks, and telecom semiconductors. He highlighted the importance of enhancing India's participation in global standardization efforts and establishing advanced telecom testbeds to support research, innovation, validation, and deployment of next-generation technologies.
The meeting included participation from TAG and ETG members, senior government officials, leading academicians, industry representatives, and telecom startups. Key speakers from institutions including IIT Madras, IIT Hyderabad, Telecommunications Standards Development Society India, Axiro Semiconductor, INSPACe, Tejas Networks, NITI Aayog, Nokia India, Vodafone Idea Limited, IIT Gandhinagar, Hindustan Unilever Limited, Sterling Tools Ltd, and BSNL provided diverse perspectives.
Discussions highlighted the need for focused investments in 6G technologies, a unified mission-mode approach, development of indigenous standards and Indian Standard Essential Patents (SEPs), and strengthening market access through product-linked incentives and domestic chip design. Participants emphasized strategic opportunities in Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN), trusted data intelligence analytics, AI, and zero trust architecture.
The deliberations emphasized early and sustained participation of India in global standards, mission-oriented development of next-generation communication technologies, and creation of robust testbeds to accelerate technology validation and commercialization. Policy and funding frameworks should support indigenous design, development, and manufacturing by facilitating market access, aligning government procurement with domestic innovation, and implementing product-linked incentive mechanisms.
In concluding remarks, Dr Parvinder Maini, Scientific Secretary, summarized that broad consensus emerged on strengthening India's strategic autonomy across the telecom technology value chain and building capabilities in strategic layers of the telecom technology stack. She emphasized accelerating technology translation from research to deployment, strengthening leadership in global standards and SEPs, and bridging the critical gap between laboratory innovation and market adoption through structured support for prototyping, field validation, interoperability testing, certification, and commercialization.
Shri Agarwal reiterated the need to bridge the gap between innovation and impact, transition to collaborative consortiums, and establish transparent mechanisms for product iteration. He highlighted unwavering policy clarity and decisive government procurement support as two important pillars, positioning the ETG as a trusted mechanism for technology assessment in frontier communication technologies.