After first Smart Cities Mission for 100 cities, the government will expand the Smart Cities Mission to all 4,000 cities in the country. The ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA), the nodal department for Smart City Mission, is set to roll out smart city 2.0 mission in 2020. The central government’s second version of the smart city initiative will be rolled out across the country, said a government official.

The ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA) is also looking at alternative funding mechanisms such as pool finance, fund of fund approach, bonds, fiscal money, monetisation of unused land and tapping foreign capital.

The mission has started rating the existing projects under five parameters - planning, technology, governance, services and finance, along with climate sensitive action and ease of living sensitive action. So far, about 10% of the planned projects have been completed in the past three years.

Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), a joint venture of four public sector enterprises under the Ministry of Power, Government of India, announced the successful installation of over 5,00,000 smart meters in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, under the Government of India’s Smart Meter National Programme (SMNP). The smart meters operational in these states aim to enhance consumer convenience and rationalise electricity consumption. 

The smart meter technology is critical to India’s ongoing power sector reforms. The Smart Meter National Programme that aims to retrofit 25 crore conventional meters with smart variants will lead to 80-100 per cent improvement in billing efficiency.

Manufacturers’ Association of Information Technology (MAIT), released the report titled “Enhancing Export Competitiveness of India’s Electronic Hardware Manufacturing Ecosystem”. The report commissioned by MAIT, focuses on analysing the current ecosystem to outlining a combination of policy reforms, consisting of reimbursements of state and central tax levies, relaxation on corporate income tax and production-based incentives to boost the electronics manufacturing in the country. 

As part of its mandate of enhancing ‘export-led electronics manufacturing’, MAIT has worked out a roadmap for the electronics sector with specific emphasis on Mobiles, Datacom and PCs.

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has issued guidelines for 5G trials across all available spectrum bands indicating to allocate up to 400 MHz of radio waves for experiments. The DoT has fixed a uniform fee of INR 5,000 (~64 Euro) for the trial licence. However, its validity will range between 3 month and 2 years, depending on the purpose for which the trial is being conducted.

The government has plans to conduct spectrum auction for 5G services by the end of this year to enable the roll-out of commercial services using the technology in 2020.

Indian entities involved in R&D, manufacturing, telecom operators and academia for the purpose of R&D and experimentation can get licence for a period of "up to two years, renewable on case to case basis by WPC, subject to truncation to prevent interference to licensed operations".

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) has sought inputs from select stakeholders on its draft data protection Bill. MEITY, in a letter sent has sought clarifications on issues such as data localisation and ways to govern non-personal data, including anonymised, community and ecommerce data.

MeitY has sought inputs on the scope of the data authority and obligations for the data fiduciary. It also asked stakeholders for feedback on the “contours of a policy that should govern non-personal data” and whether there was a case to mandate free access to such data. The Bill would focus only on personal data of citizens and that MeitY was not looking to expand that to include non-personal data. MeitY is not holding “any fresh consultations” on the Data Protection Bill.  No industry association or company has been contacted and only individual opinions have been sought, the official clarified. 

The Digital Communications Commission (DCC) approved a series of measures to increase Information and Communications Technology (ICT) access to persons with disabilities (PwD), including a mandate for major mobile phone manufacturers to produce at least one model which satisfies the needs of PwDs.

“All mobile manufacturers who produce more than 5 models shall be mandated to make one model that satisfies the needs of persons with disabilities.

The Centre has also been conducting inter-ministerial consultations on the issue and a committee under the Department for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities will now be set up to drive measures focused on increasing ICT access to this group of telecom users. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had already submitted its recommendations on the issue as early as July 2018, with the measures approved by the DCC largely toeing the line. DCC has also approved other measures suggested by TRAI.  

of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY)'s secretary said that the government is now working on policies to develop electronic components manufacturing base in the country and encourage exports. "From near assembly, India is right now moving in that direction seriously with policies to bringing sub-assemblies, component manufacturing in India. 

Once printed circuit board (PCB or the motherboard) assembly takes off in India, it will not only cater to the mobile phone segment, but also other major electronic devices, he added. The last five years, the MeiTY secretary said, witnessed a resurgence of manufacturing in India, starting with assembling of mobile phones. "From around 6 crore mobile phones that were being assembled in 2014-15, we closed the last financial year with assembly of 29 crore mobile phones within the country.

Two more supercomputers, set to be functional in the coming days, will power India’s research and development projects, as the first phase of the country’s National Supercomputing Mission gets underway.

The supercomputers, being installed at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Pune, are expected to be functional within the next few days.

A total of six supercomputers are to be installed in the first phase of the National Supercomputing Mission, of which three have been installed, and rest will be installed at IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad, and Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Studies (JNIAS) by December.

France and India intend to make digital technology a transformative factor in their societies, to foster economic growth, sustainable development and secure enhanced internet access which is essential to bridge digital divide.

Cooperation in the field of cybersecurity: France and India recognise the importance of the pursuit and the deepening of the cyber dialogue whose third edition was held in Paris on June 20th, 2019, and welcomed the joint statement adopted at its end. In this regard, they wish to strengthen their coordination in support of ongoing discussions in various multilateral fora dedicated to the discussion on application of international law and the implementation of the norms for responsible state behaviour in cyberspace adopted in previous UN GGE reports.