The GSM Association has announced its arrival in India in a rather strange and controversial manner. The global mobile industry body, which announced the launch of its India office last week has told PTI that India should refrain from developing its own technology standards, and that technology standards need to remain global. This is probably in response to a proposal in the new National Telecom Policy that calls for development of new standards and intellectual property from India. The NTP, still in its draft stage, proposes the following: - To promote setting up of Telecommunications Standard Development Organisation (TSDO) as an autonomous body with strong participation of the industry, R&D centres, service providers, and academia to drive consensus regarding national requirements. It will facilitate access for the Indian Industry in the International Standards Development Organisations and act as an advisory body for incorporation of Indian requirement/IPRs/standards in the international standards. - To incentivize telecom service providers to use indigenous products by encouraging: Commitment to purchase Indian products that are comparable in price and performance to imported products; Commitment to participate in trials of newly created Indian products, nurture them and place pilot orders; Funding R&D and support Indian IPR creation and participate in creation of standards; To mandate testing and certification of all telecom products for conformance, performance, interoperability, health, safety, security, EMF/EMI/EMC, etc. to ensure safe-to-connect and seamless functioning in the existing and future networks. The way things stand right now, India imports much of its telecom equipment, and in accordance with…
