The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released a consultation paper on 'Encouraging R&D in Telecom, Broadcasting and IT (ICT) Sectors’.

The purpose of the paper, as per TRAI, is to develop a comprehensive ecosystem for enhancing R&D in the ICT sector of the country to ensure processes for generating a pool of R&D scientists/ engineers, duly supported by the government and private partners.

According to TRAI, R&D has played a crucial role in shaping today's world.

However, in the existing R&D ecosystem in India, there are areas of further improvement in promoting R&D ICT sector, learning from the international best practices in R&D and apply relevant learnings in India and also to identify the issues which require interventions in terms of policies and incentives to improve the R&Din the leT sector and help India emerge as a world leader, TRAI stated.

According to the authority, in the consultation paper prepared based on the online brainstorming session and inputs from academia and industry experts from lIT Madras, lIT Kanpur and lIT Hyderabad etc., TRAI has analyzed the important issues which require intervention in the existing R&D ecosystem in India under the three focus elements: "Education & Training System", "Science System" and "Regulatory Framework".

The third focus element "Regulatory Framework" has been divided into two parts, namely, "Policies and Programs" and "IPR Framework". Proactively prioritizing R&D and innovation can create a favourable environment for budding entrepreneurs and innovators in the country. In the consultation paper, TRAI emphasises the need to build a robust R&D ecosystem and discusses potential issues which need to be addressed to enable the same.

TRAI said, “Technological advancements and convergence in Telecom, Broadcasting and ITsectors are taking place at a rapid pace. Some of the emerging trends in these sectors are 5G, 6G, Open-RAN, Internet of Things (loT),AI and ML, Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Metaverse, Quantum Computing, Cloud Services, Edge computing, Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Software Defined Networking (SDN), Over-The-Top (OTT)services and Hybrid Set Top Box (STB) etc.”

In the Consultation Paper, TRAI said they also explored the R&D ecosystem of leading countries in R&D and innovation space. These include Israel, Republic of Korea, United States, Sweden, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Finland etc. International best practices in R&D may act as key learnings for India in its ambition to strengthen its R&D ecosystem and become a $5 trillion economy.

The authority has sought written comments from stakeholders by October 23, 2023, and counter comments by November 6, 2023.