Policy document outlines every area from 5G through IoT to ‘etc’
The governments of the UK and India have agreed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to ‘develop and deepen’ mutually beneficial cooperation in telecoms and IT. “It’s an acknowledgement of their importance as contributors to trade, and lays the foundations for collaborating on development and modernising networks and services,” said the government release.
The scope of the project is outlined in Article 2 of the ten article policy paper and outlines the areas of common interest for cooperation in ten areas, including telco regulation, spectrum management, connectivity including mobile roaming, standards, wireless and security.
The sixth category, technological development section (f) looks interesting with 5G, IoT/ M2M, Cloud Computing are all mentioned, but could the inclusion of the word “etc” indicates there was not much thought given to this document? There seems to be missing sections too, with the listing jumping in categories from (g) security of telco infrastructure and service provision, to section (i) collaboration and sharing of information on research and development.
What happened to section (h)? Was there a missing subject matter over which they couldn’t agree on a common interest? Or are we reading too much into a typo? Could it be that the missing area of mutual interest is building high capacity in ‘high technology areas’ (whatever that means) and exchange of expertise wherever possible? If this is a government memorandum of understanding, it seems a bit hastily written, since there are more unlabelled areas in the document.
Opportunities for joint work and the facilitation of trade and investment are possibly the most immediate areas impact, given the sense of urgency created by the UK’s Department of international Trade (DIT) following the decline in British exports since Brexit. The UK The Office for Budget Responsibility’s latest forecast shows that UK international trade will continue to be 15 per cent smaller than if the country had remained within the EU. According to Just Trade, the UK government recently launched a 12-point plan to almost double the value of exports from £600bn to £1 trillion by 2030.
The MOU says the areas of cooperation, falling within the scope of Article 2, may take the following forms: Facilitation of joint research and studies and the exchange of information. Given that investment money is on the table from the UK DIT, there could be funding for the telco industry more of the ‘conference, visits, seminars and webinars and etc’ mooted by the MOU. The Establishment of Centres of Excellence and Security Test Labs and Capacity building are both listed ambitions.
The areas of technology over which mutual co-operation between the UK and India is highlighted will be on “IoT/ M2M, 5G, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Cloud Computing.”
For more details on everything from Joint Working Groups to Dispute Settlement, click here.
in other Anglo-Indian tech pact news, UK low earth orbit satellite company OneWeb has agreed a new launch programme with the Indian Space Research Organisation reports Telecoms.
New Space India – the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation – and low earth orbit satellite firm OneWeb will launch clusters from the Satrish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, beginning this year. These launches take UK-government owned OneWeb’s total starfleet of in-orbit constellation of 428 satellites, two thirds of planned total. The objective is a global network for creating high-speed, low-latency connections.
“This is yet another historic day for collaboration in Space, thanks to the shared ambition and vision of New Space India and OneWeb,” said Sunil Bharti Mittal, OneWeb Executive Chairman. “This most recent agreement on launch plans adds considerable momentum to the development of OneWeb’s network, as we work together across the Space industry toward our common goal of connecting communities globally.”