India got its 8th Telecom Centre of Excellence here today with RailTel Corrporation signing an MoU with IIT Roorkee for establishing RailTel IIT Roorkee Centre of Excellence in Telecom (RICET).
The MoU was signed in the presence of Kapil Sibal, Minister of Communications and Information Technology and Law and Justice.
RailTel shall fund the TCOE through 100 percent budgetary support over five year period for doing Research and Development in the field of 'ICT and Broadband Applications'.
RailTel Corporation, which is a Mini Ratna (Category I) PSU of the Ministry of Railways, is one of the largest telecom infrastructure providers in the country having country wide optic fiber network along Railway right of way.
Already 7 TCOEs are working in the country established by all major Telecom operators in partnership with premier institutions like IITs and IIMs. Over 28 innovations and products have been developed in various fields of telecommunication by existing TCOEs which are available for commercial roll out. With the establishment of the 8th TCOE, north India also got its first TCOE in the region.
RICET will work upon Research and Development in the field of development of applications, services and technology in the domain of broadband and ICT for providing affordable services to the citizens with high network availability. This shall include in-house development of applications, customizing applications for specific use as per local requirements or through collaboration with national/international organizations and for promoting affordable broadband infrastructure in the country.
Some of the probable areas for Broadband Applications and Innovations shall be Development of Vernacular Language Tools to convert content into local language; Development of Cloud based e-gov, e-agri, and other e-services etc.