Make in India Initiative to Get Boost with Direct-to-Mobile Phones
To meet the demand for Direct-to-Mobile (D2M) phones from the general public, Free Stream Technologies (which is incubated at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur), Lava International, and HMD have announced launch plans in advance of the World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (WAVES) 2025 in Mumbai.
This comes before extensive field trials in India.
Direct-to-Mobile, a broadcasting technology that uses terrestrial TV broadcast airwaves to deliver live TV, video, audio, and text messages (multimedia content) of public and national importance (such as entertainment, sports, educational programming, and emergency alerts) directly to phones without the need for Wi-Fi or internet service, is in keeping with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's clear call for Viksit Bharat.
As previously disclosed, Tejas Networks (Saankhya Labs) SL-3000 D2M chipsets power low-cost feature phones, smartphones, and tablets, supporting the "Make in India" and "Design in India" initiatives.
Additionally, Tejas Networks and Sinclair, Inc. have collaborated to produce a suite of infrastructure hardware and software products for D2M deployment.
Over the past few years, Prasar Bharati, in collaboration with Tejas Networks and IIT Kanpur, has been testing this technology on live networks.
Sumeet Nindrajog, Director of Free Stream Technologies said, "We are pleased that Lava and HMD are doing the groundwork to rapidly create a viable device ecosystem for a nationwide deployment road map. Their willingness to supply in scale is the best vote of confidence for the future success of D2M."
Sanjeev Agarwal, Executive Director, Lava International, said, "Our D2M featurephone design incorporates the modem and the apps in a clever way to maintain low cost, which is a hallmark of our devices."
These most recent advancements in D2M Broadcasting come after IIT Kanpur completed a proof of concept for Prasar Bharati, the findings of which were presented to the TRAI, DoT, and MIB leadership at a conference in 2022.
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The unveiling of domestically produced D2M phones comes after an earlier international partnership between an American broadcaster and India's first fabless chip design startup, which laid the groundwork for what is probably going to be one of the country's first deep-tech full stacks, from chips to platforms.