The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has officially signed a strategic five-year agreement with the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) to establish a state-of-the-art end-to-end optical network test bed. Funded and supported by DoT, this test bed will be located at the C-DOT Campus in New Delhi. It will serve as a critical real-world environment to accelerate the development, testing, and commercialisation of optical communication solutions created by Indian startups and industry players.
The public-funded project primarily bridges the gap between lab-stage innovation and market readiness. This initiative will further accelerate the development and deployment of home-grown optical communication technologies, to further advance the vision of “Aatmanirbhar Bharat” and strengthen India’s capabilities in next-generation communication infrastructure. By combining C-DOT’s mature, field-ready products across optical core, access, and quantum security technologies, the test bed will function as a catalyst for the Indian telecom ecosystem.
The test bed will serve as a platform for skill development and capacity building in advanced optical communications, providing students, researchers, startups and industry professionals opportunities for hands-on training and exposure to next-generation optical networking technologies.
The end-to-end optical network test bed will be a shared national resource for innovation, testing, validation, skill development and commercialisation. The technical blueprint structures the initiative into two definitive phases: