By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar February 6, 2022: Union Minister of Railways, Communication and Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw on Sunday said India is poised to become the world leader in mobile handset manufacturing over the next few years and the 5G technology has progressed satisfactorily and will be rolled out this year.

Vaishnaw said India has emerged as the 2nd largest manufacturer of mobile handsets in the world in terms of volume with 200 units manufacturing mobile handsets. The minister was addressing the media in Bhubaneswar on Sunday.

“Due to a large number of manufacturing units, the market size of India’s electronic manufacturing has touched ₹6 lakh crore. The sector is generating 22 lakh jobs. With the speed at which electronic manufacturing is progressing, the market size will reach ₹25 lakh crore in 5 years. It will be then generating 80 lakh employment,” Vaishnaw said.

The Union minister said India has achieved progress in 5G much more than expected and very soon 5G core and radio network would be launched. “During the past 2 years C-DOT and TCS have developed the technology by virtualising the network. Our engineers have worked hard on virtualisation which no other company in the world has mastered. I am confident that India will become the world leader in mobile technology,” he said, adding that India has developed 4G technology better than the ones available in other countries.

Vaishnaw said as many as 6,000 villages in Odisha remain out of mobile network due to lack of mobile towers. His ministry has identified around 3,933 sites where mobile towers will be installed.

On revival of BSNL/MTNL, he said public sector telecom companies had become bankrupt during the UPA rule. “BSNL was a profitable company. However, its funds were diverted in UPA era. Once BSNL is stable with 4G technology, in 1-2 years it will adopt 5G technology,” he said.