India steps up 6G push as Bharat 6G Alliance expands to 90 members

MUMBAI: The race to 6G is shifting gears, and India is making sure it isn’t just in the fast lane but helping draw the road map. With alliances growing, testbeds taking shape and global standards in sight, the country’s next telecom leap is gathering pace.

The Centre has said the Bharat 6G Alliance (B6GA) has expanded to 90 members as of 15 July 2026, strengthening collaboration between industry, academia, startups and research institutions as India positions itself to play a larger role in shaping global 6G technologies.

Replying to an unstarred question in the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Communications Dr Pemmasani Chandra Sekhar said the alliance now brings together telecom service providers, equipment manufacturers, startups, research institutions and academic organisations to accelerate indigenous innovation and intellectual property development.

To drive the initiative, the alliance has constituted seven working groups covering 6G technologies, spectrum, applications and use cases, revenue models, devices and components, sustainability, and outreach. The groups are tasked with identifying technology gaps, fostering industry-academia collaboration and developing proposals for advanced research and testbeds aligned with India’s 6G Vision.

On spectrum planning, the minister said the alliance’s spectrum working group has submitted a report titled ‘Spectrum Roadmap for 6G in India’. Separately, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), after consultations with stakeholders including the Bharat 6G Alliance, has released its own Spectrum Roadmap for 6G Services, outlining the country’s long-term spectrum strategy for next-generation wireless networks.

The government also updated Parliament on the progress of India’s 6G Terahertz Testbed, being established at the Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering and Research (SAMEER), Kolkata.

The project, approved in April 2023 under the Telecom Technology Development Fund of the Digital Bharat Nidhi, has a three-year implementation period and is being executed by SAMEER in collaboration with IIT Madras, IIT Guwahati and IIT Patna.

As part of the project, the consortium demonstrated a high-data-rate line-of-sight Terahertz communication link during the India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2025, marking an early milestone in India’s indigenous 6G research efforts.

The government also highlighted India’s growing participation in global standardisation efforts. It said the country successfully contributed to the International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) IMT-2030 framework, securing the inclusion of ‘ubiquitous connectivity’ as one of the six key 6G usage scenarios, while also advocating coverage, interoperability and sustainability as core capabilities of future 6G networks.

To strengthen India’s presence in international telecom standards, the Department of Telecommunications is supporting Indian organisations’ participation in bodies such as the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), ITU and oneM2M through its Technology Development and Investment Promotion (TDIP) Scheme.

The scheme provides financial assistance for membership fees, participation in global standardisation meetings, hosting international meetings in India, as well as pilot testing and validation of telecom products, reflecting the government’s ambition to move India from being a technology adopter to a contributor in the global 6G ecosystem.