Eye On Rural, India Setting Global Standards For 5G Tech: TSDSI Chief Bhaskar Ramamurthi

NEW DELHI: The fourth generation telephony focused mainly on urban areas, with coverage of the countryside being incidental, says Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, chairman of Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI). But 5G will be a leveller of sorts; rural areas will get carpet coverage and the same kind of broadband as urban areas, Prof. Ramamurthi, Director of IIT Madras, told StratNews Global Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale in an exclusive interview. The Radio Interface Technology (RIT) developed by TSDSI, which aims at enabling enhanced mobile connectivity in rural, remote and sparsely developed areas, is on the verge of being included as an International Mobile Telecommunications-2020 standard by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a UN body that had earlier adopted the Low-Mobility-Large-Cell (LMLC) use case proposed by TSDSI as a mandatory 5G requirement. As 5G involves huge security considerations, Indian companies must build the core network for India, he added.