MoU Signed Between Railtel and IIT Roorkee for Establishing 8th TCOE

RailTel Corrporation signed a Memorandum of Understanding with IIT Roorkee on 5 June 2013 establishment of RailTel IIT Roorkee Centre of Excellence in Telecom (RICET). With the signing of this MoU, India got its 8th Telecom Centre of Excellence (TCOE).

The TCOE will be funded by RailTel through 100% budgetary support over 5 year period for doing Research & Development in the field of ICT & Broadband Applications.

RailTel Corporation is the Mini Ratna (Category I) PSU of the Ministry of Railways. It is one of the largest telecom infrastructure providers in India with the country wide optic fiber network along Railway right of way.

Seven TCOEs are already established in India by the major Telecom operators in partnership with premier institutions like IITs & IIMs. The existing TCOEs have created more than 28 innovations and products in various fields of telecommunication. These products and innovations are also available for the commercial purposes. With the signing of current MoU, North India got its first TCOE.

The area of R&D in the field of development of applications, services and technology in the domain of broadband & ICT will be in the hands of RICET. This will facilitate affordable services to all the citizens with the availability of high network. This will include in-house development of applications, customizing applications for specific use as per local requirements or through collaboration with national or international organisations for promotion of affordable broadband infrastructure in India.

Some probable areas for Broadband Applications and Innovations shall be Development of Vernacular Language Tools to convert content into local language; Development of Cloud based e-gov, e-agri, and other e-services.