Bharti Lecture: IIT Delhi Celebrates World Telecommunication Day

The Bharti School of Telecommunication Technology and Management (BSTTM) at IIT Delhi celebrated the World Telecommunication Day on Wednesday, May 17. 

Annual Bharti Lecture

On this occasion, Amitabh Kant, India’s G20 Sherpa and former CEO of NITI Aayog, delivered the Annual Bharti Lecture titled “India’s G20 Presidency: Building Consensus in a Fractured World- Frontier for Digital Cooperation”. 
Rakesh Bharti Mittal, Vice Chairman, Bharti Enterprises, and Prof. Rangan Banerjee, Director, IIT Delhi, were also present on this occasion.

Amitabh Kant expressed his admiration for the Bharti Group and its contribution to public causes and IIT Delhi’s premier education and R&D initiatives. Kant informed the audience that it was India that created India Stack, a Digital public infrastructure on Open Source software for a set of Open APIs aiming to unlock the economic primitives of identity, data, and payments at population scale. This initiative ensured India’s continued growth and offered opportunities to accelerate Inclusiveness, Resilience, Sustainable Growth and have a new Green Development pact. As the India Stack is open and scalable, it can be applied by other countries to accelerate their digital transformation. 

Kant stressed on the fact that IMF and World Bank policies were designed for post-World War 2 conditions and are not agile enough to handle digital transformations. Today, in India, the mobile phone is a virtual Bank offering endless Business opportunities, possible because of the deployed digital Infrastructure and this has led to cost of acquisition for customer to be lowest in comparison. A record number of unicorns and entrepreneurs have been created in this era of digital transformation. India demonstrated Big Tech Innovation with the Government initiatives providing the public layer and applied by private entities.

Addressing the gathering at IIT Delhi, Amitabh Kant said, “We are actually now getting into global value chains in a very big way. And that will enable us to penetrate global markets. It is very important that whatever we do, we do it at a global scale to enable us to penetrate global markets. I am truly delighted that I am speaking on what I think has been India's huge achievement in our ability to become a technology layer and a technology leader in many ways. When we started the digital India movement in 2015, we were 123rd in data consumption. Last year, we were number one in the world in data consumption. From 123rd, we have jumped to the number one position. And I think that is what we need to do in all areas of technological growth. That will enable us to become the global leader in education because all these sectors, whether you look at education, health, logistics, transport, or urbanisation, will all be a function of our ability to become a telecom leader. Telecom will fuel digitization, and digitization will process and fuel all transformations in all these areas. And therefore, the Bharti School of Telecom (at IIT Delhi) will have to be the key driver of this transformation in India. And I really wish it all success and progress in the days to come. I take this opportunity to congratulate IIT Delhi and the Bharti Group for this very innovative partnership in creating this wonderful school here". 

Rakesh Bharti Mittal, Vice Chairman, Bharti Enterprises, said, “India’s G20 Presidency is focused on accelerating the benefits of digital transformation to bridge the global digital divide globally, through consensus among nations and by bolstering efforts of both the government and the private sector. At the Bharti School of Telecommunication Technology and Management, our endeavour is to develop futuristic telecom leaders through world-class education, innovation and research while supporting efforts to drive industry-academia collaboration in bridging the connectivity gap and thus contributing towards an inclusive digital economy.”

The Bharti School was set up in 2000 through a joint initiative of IIT Delhi and Bharti Enterprises to further Education & Research in emerging technological as well as managerial aspects of telecom sector. The school offers PhD, MS (Research), M.Tech., and MBA programmes.

BSTTM, IIT Delhi, was actively involved in the project to develop India’s first indigenous 5G test bed as part of a multi-institutional project. In order to help startups and industry players test and validate their products locally and lessen reliance on foreign facilities, the Hon'ble PM, Shri Narendra Modi, inaugurated the test bed last May 2022. 

Speaking of the Bharti School of Telecommunication Technology and Management, Prof. Rangan Banerjee, Director, IIT Delhi, said, “We have been fortunate to have had the Bharti School at our institute as an example of an Industry-Academia partnership for more than two decades. Through this school we have created future ready specialised professionals for the Telecom sector. The school has also been responsible for catalysing research projects and innovation in 5G/6G. We have created 5G test beds use cases and believe that we can play a role in providing leadership in education and research in the telecom sector. We are inspired by Mr. Kant’s vision of India’s leadership of ideas through the G20 and look forward to contributing to this vision.” 

A wide array of activities of the school include research on telecom security, use of private 5G technologies for enhancement of Industry 4.0 application, open source OpenRAN, visual light based communication, smart Internet of Things technologies for environmental monitoring & energy optimization, smart haptic and remote control technologies with potential applications to remotely piloted vehicles/autonomous robots, analysis & growth prediction and technology adaptation to the Indian context, and application development using emerging technologies.