India’s 4G Stack Journey Like A Bollywood Movie—Many Rejections, But Now A Blockbuster: Telecom Secretary

India’s homegrown 4G network stack has emerged as a major success story after years of setbacks, said Telecom Secretary Neeraj Mittal at a press meet on the Swadeshi 4G Network, chaired by Union Minister Jyotiraditya M. Scindia. "Our first load test for 10,000 subscribers failed in 2022," Mittal recalled. "But today, this hasn’t failed for months, we are serving 22 million consumers on our network. We are ready to take this technology to the rest of the world."

He noted, "India's 4G stack Journey is like a Bollywood movie, so many rejections but now a blockbuster."

Scindia called it a "historic day not only for BSNL and OEMs, but for India and the world."

He announced that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will unveil BSNL’s indigenous 4G stack on Saturday, making India the fifth country globally to produce telecom equipment and BSNL the sixth company to do so.

The stack, developed in 22 months, is a collaboration between C-DOT (core software), Tejas Networks (RAN), and TCS (integration), and will be rolled out to 98,000 sites across India.

Scindia also highlighted the upcoming launch of the 4G mobile project under the Digital Bharat Nidhi, which will connect 27,106 unconnected sites across 38,000 villages, with a total outlay of Rs 31,000 crore.

He emphasised BSNL’s financial turnaround, noting a Rs 25,000 crore capex in the last fiscal and rising subscriber numbers. “We walked behind the world on 4G, walked with the world on 5G, but we will lead 6G,” Scindia said.

The India-made network is cloud-based, future-ready and can upgrade seamlessly to 5G, Scindia said.