BT to fund India-UK joint research on advanced telecom networks

23 January 2009

A British Telecom-backed team of UK and Indian scientists and engineers will head a £9.2-million research project to develop 'Next Generation Networks', vital to pushing forward the digital economy.

This collaboration between the Indian and UK governments, universities and ICT specialists in both countries will work to develop Next Generation telecom networks, ICT services and applications in the two countries, along with work on wireless sensor networks, which could aid healthcare and early warning weather systems in rural areas.

Funding will be used by the India-UK Advanced Technology Centre (IU-ATC) to drive collaborative research and the sharing of new communications technology between India and the UK.

The research will be conducted into Next Generation network enabled applications and services, converged network protocols and systems and wireless communications and mobility. The research is designed to underpin the development of policies and initiatives for both rural and urban Digital Economy programmes in India and the UK.

The wider IU-ATC consortium currently comprises nine UK universities, six Indian research institutes, seven industry partners in both countries including BT, InfoSys, Wipro, Sasken, Tejas and Midas and a number of small business partners.

The grant money includes £5 million jointly from the Research Councils UK (RCUK) Digital Economy Programme, led by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and the Indian government's Department of Science and Technology (DST). This is matched by a further contribution of over £4 million from a consortium of the IU-ATC academic and industrial partners.