New Delhi, Dec 10 (Agency) Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) on Thursday announced the world’s first Satellite-based narrowband-IoT, which will help India to have access to an ubiquitous fabric of connectivity for millions of yet unconnected machines, sensors and industrial IoT devices. This new ‘Made in India’ Solution, which is indigenously developed in partnership with Skylotech India, will connect with BSNL’s satellite ground infrastructure and provide PAN-India coverage, including Indian seas.
The coverage will be so vast that it will not leave any dark patch within the boundary of the country, from Kashmir and Ladakh to Kanyakumari, and from Gujarat to the North East, including the Indian seas. BSNL CMD P K Purwar, while making the announcement, said that the solution is in line with BSNL’s vision to leverage technology to provide affordable and innovative telecom services and products across customer segments. Skylo will also help provide critical data for the logistics sector, to enable effective distribution of COVID-19 vaccine in 2021 and will be a big contributor in service to the nation,’’ he averred. This major breakthrough announcement is very timely because it comes during the ongoing Indian Mobile Congress 2020.
This new technology supports the Department of Telecom and NITI Aayog’s plan of bringing indigenous IoT connectivity to the country’s core sectors. Examples of where this technology has already been tested successfully include the Indian Railways, fishing vessels, and enabling connected vehicles across India. “For centuries, industries, including agriculture, railways and fisheries, have been operating offline, and have not had the opportunity to take full advantage of the latest advancements in AI& IoT– until today. ‘’This is the world’s first satellite-based NB-IoT network and I am proud to launch this capability in India first, to transform lives and our domestic industries,’’ Skylo CEO Parthsarathi Trivedi said. A small, smart, incredibly rugged box, the Skylo ‘User Terminal,’ interfaces with sensors and transmits data to the Skylo Network and into people’s hands. The accompanying Data Platform provides an immersive visual experience for industry-specific applications on mobile or desktop. It gives users the ability to take immediate and appropriate action, no matter where they are. This new digital machine connectivity layer will serve as a complement to smartphone-centric mobile & Wi-Fi networks, and will cover the country’s full geography, to bring online new applications for the first time.