India's R&D underpins its bid to join the Asian technology alliance

Rethink IT, Oct, 2005

We have paid a great deal of attention recently to the bid by the Japan-China-Korea axis to take a lead role in the hi-tech intellectual property race, and so to reduce their dependence on western patents and suppliers. The other Asian superpower, India, has been less aggressive, at least in the past few years, about creating and driving standards, but now it is indicating that it, too, wishes to take a leading role in order to boost its own industry outside the home market, to reduce its companies' costs and increase the level of GDP derived from communications. In this quest, it is increasingly likely to ally with Korea and China.

In the late 1990s, Indian governments favored creating homegrown technology and standards in order to disadvantage outside vendors--but at the cost of incompatibility with global standards (an approach now out of vogue, in general, though emulated by China with its creation of specific standards for 3G, wireless security and other platforms).

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

Much of the Indian R&D program is focused on communications and wireless technology. The current Indian administration has been the most ambitious to date in seeking to adopt next generation networking technologies at an early stage, bringing more of the population into the digital economy and stimulating the overall national economy by leapfrogging many more established nations in communications terms. Now it is setting out the development roadmaps that will underpin these aims, working with key partners from outside its borders but also looking to create an industry and a driving force of its own.

The Indian ministry of information technology has published a report on its key R&D programs in 2004-5, showing a strong focus on wireless technologies and affordable computing.

The programs include developing very simple, low cost messaging terminals that could extend wireless communications to poorer communities; an operating system for smart cards; and various building blocks for an ambitious perpetually available mobile communications infrastructure, with Wi-Fi and WiMAX key elements.

The ministry recently set up the Center for Excellence in Wireless Technologies (CeWIT) in Chennai, a public-private initiative to promote R&D in fixed and mobile technologies and create next generation wireless platforms. CeWIT will address issues of achieving last mile access at low cost in order to incorporate more of the country into the digital economy, and how to strengthen India's global role in creating next generation systems by improving its intellectual property base, and therefore its ability to help drive standards. This in turn could reduce its burden of royalty payments to outside vendors.

OTHER INITIATIVES

Another project, this one implemented by the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, is working on mesh peer-to-peer technologies for rural Wi-Fi-based networks that would solve the last 25 kilometer access problem in rural India.

Another initiative is MeTel, a low cost messaging terminal targeted at villages sharing a Wi-Fi connection.

While India is stepping up its activities in R&D that can be exported as well as exploited internally, it still lacks the advanced vendor community to commercialize these technologies abroad. It offers a low cost manufacturing base, but so far this has benefited western companies--especially since rules on foreign investment in India were relaxed--as much as the native suppliers, which remain unsophisticated in terms of handset design or large operator support capabilities. Like the Chinese manufacturers, which have been going through a similar cycle from mere cost efficiency to innovation and quality, the Indian vendors will develop rapidly, but the country, for now at least, remains dependent on outside ventures to get its technologies into the wider world.

It tends to favour non-US partners in many instances, and is working closely, at government and supplier level, with counterparts in Korea and China. A key focus is likely to be WiMAX, with Samsung and Intel both working intensively on encouraging Indian adoption of the technology. So far, Samsung seems to have made the most headway, and it is widely believed that, had its Wi-Bro technology failed to be harmonized with the 802.16e mobile WiMAX standard, India would have gone with Wi-Bro. This would have been an even greater blow to WiMAX, in the short term, than a Chinese decision for the Asian platform, since India is far more aggressive about implementing broadband wireless access on a wide scale within a short time period than China is.

The other key partner in WiMAX--and especially the bid to combine that network with very low cost user equipment, an effort that lies at the heart of plans to extend access in India--is Alcatel. The French company has extended its alliance with the center of wireless development in India with a formal joint venture that could position the French company strongly once the Indian broadband wireless market expands.