India Department of Telecommunications has unveiled the ‘5G Hackathon’ in collaboration with various government, academic, and industry institutions in a bid to develop and promote relevant interest in India’s 5G space.
According to the department, this initiative is aimed at shortlisting India’s focused cutting edge ideas that can be converted into workable 5G products and solutions. The 5G Hackathon will be spread across three phases beginning soon.
The ‘5G Hackathon’ is being developed in collaboration with namely; Niti Aayog, the Electronics and Information Technology Ministry, Digital India, Startup India, the MSME Ministry, C-DoT, the Department of Science and Technology, TCOE India, the TEPC, TSDSI, the COAI, the India Mobile Congress, KPMG, academic institutions such as the IITs/IIIT/REC, and industry.
Mobile operators COAI noted the 5G technology observe a massive leap over 4G in terms of speed, peak data rate, latency, spectrum efficiency, and connection density.
Additionally, the 5G Hackathon will convert innovating ideas into products and solutions in different verticals and develop India specific use cases around 5G, most mobile operators association, also with the most distinct feature is applications in different economic verticals.
Winners of the prize pool
The department explained that the winners of the various phases would share a total prize pool of Rs 2.5 crores, and a unique opportunity to scale and implement their 5G applications to make them market-ready with the support of DoT, MeitY and several leading industries, academia, Telcos/OEMs.
Inclusively participants can develop 5G solutions from across ten categories, namely healthcare, education & governance, AgriTech & livestock, environment, public safety & disaster management enterprise, Smart Cities & infrastructure, cybersecurity, banking, finance & insurance, logistics & transportation, multimedia & broadcast, among others.
The 5G Hackathon is open to developers, students, start-ups, SMEs, academic institutions & registered companies in India & NRIs. Stakeholders can participate as individuals or as a team to present use cases for the 5G network in the Indian context.
Other 5G Hackathon
Notably, other countries have previously also staged a 5G Hackathon to increase and develop their 5G network.
Los Angeles held theirs at the AT&T arena, where thousands battled for the grand prize, and other cities include Luca, in Italy, the 2019 Ultra Hackathon, among others.
