Scindia Calls for Guardrails on Technology Misuse | India Mobile Congress 2024

New Delhi, Oct 17 (PTI) Union telecom minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Thursday said that agencies like World Telecommunications Standardisation Assembly and 3GPP should put guardrails to prevent the misuse of technologies.

During a session with content creators at India Mobile Congress 2024, the minister said technology and innovation always bring with tremendous amount of productivity, improvements, creativity improvements, lot of agility, but along with it must also bring certain guardrails and certain standardization such that it is not misused.

"Therefore, when you go down the road of technology, when you are going from 4G to 5G, which is higher speed, higher rate, higher, lower levels of latency, higher capability in terms of product formation, you also have to make sure that agencies like WTSA, 3GPP, put the guardrails in place in terms of those who want to misuse technology," Scindia said.

India for the first time is hosting ITU's WTSA which is working to shape the 6G technology.

Scindia said that over 4.5 lakh 5G sites have been installed in the country in a record 21-month time and the country now has 17 crore 5G users.

The minister said the content creator economy is estimated to be around USD 30 billion at present which is expected to become a USD 480 billion enterprise by 2030-35 with support of telecom technology.

"The West may lead the charge in some ways in terms of technology, India does and will lead the future in terms of the creation of content. I do believe the government's role is to lay out the carriageway as well as the guardrails. The carriageways are your fibre, telecom infrastructure, the guardrails are regulation and standardization" he said.

The minister said that India has come a long way in the last 10 years from nowhere in terms of technology on 3G and 4G to developing the 5Gi standard which has been approved by the global standards body.

He said now India aims to contribute 10 per cent of total patents for 6G standards.