NTIPRIT Conducts Webinar on "NavIC - Opportunities for the Telecom Industry" in collaboration with ISRO and Telecom Industry

National Telecommunications Institute for Policy Research, Innovation and Training (NTIPRIT), the apex training institute of DoT, conducted a webinar on April 28, 2021 on the topic "NavIC - Opportunities for the Telecom Industry" in collaboration with ISRO and Telecom Industry.

NTIPRIT Webinar on Telecom Sector

Anshu Prakash, Secretary, DoT and Chairman, DCC inaugurated the webinar. K Ram Chand, Member (Technology), DCC gave the the inaugural address, along with R Umamaheswaran, Scientific Secretary, ISRO, and U.K. Srivastava, Sr DDG, NTIPRIT.

In his keynote added, K Ram Chand underscored the importance and relevance of NavIC technology. Furthermore, he lauded NTIPRIT for continuously organizing events on latest technologies. According to him, these events held even more weight given the current COVID-19 crisis.

R Umamaheswaran gave information about the NaviC system. He said that it had higher accuracy than its peer systems. Furthermore, he added that there are plans to make NavIC available on L-1 band. Incidentally, the system uses l-5 band at the moment. Finally, he added that mobile phones released in India should mandatorily adapt the NavIC system.

Anshu Prakash highlighted the importance of integration of technology with applications. He too supported the view of the system supported in all mobiles in India. Furthermore, he highlighted how the system can track essentials such as oxygen cylinders, which are notoriously short in supply in recent times.

Prakash added that the webinar's topic is inherently linked to fruition of vision of Atma Nirbhar Bharat. He also congratulated NTIPRIT for organizing the webinar.

Finally, he lauded the efforts of telecom industry, including that of chipset and handset manufacturers in their efforts to adopt the service.

What is NavIC?

NavIC (Navigation with Indian Constellation) is an autonomous regional satellite navigation system established and maintained by ISRO. It is an indigenous positioning system that is under Indian control.

Some of its key features are as follows:

• It covers India and a region extending up to 1 ,500 km beyond Indian mainland.
• It provides position accuracy better than 20 m (20) and timing accuracy better than 50 ns.
• The actual measurements demonstrate accuracy better than 5 m and 20 ns respectively.

NavIC's Satellites in Space

Today, NavIC based applications are used in various civilian sectors, including transport, map applications, and timekeeping.

What's more, major mobile chipset makers like Qualcomm, MediaTek and Broadcom already support NavIC. Additionally, via OTA updates, a few mobiles phones also support the system now.

Some examples for NavlC enabled mobile phones include the Redmi Note 9 series from Xiaomi, the Realme 6 series, the OnePlus Nord, and so on.