Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday underlined the need for resilient and secure supply chains and bolstering manufacturing in India as he launched “5G Use Case Labs” for 100 educational institutions for the development of applications across verticals such as education, agriculture, and health.

He said higher internet speeds improve ease of living and help in education, healthcare, farming, etc. “Both high speeds and availability of internet are crucial,” he said at the India Mobile Congress (IMC), where he launched the labs announced in Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s budget speech this year.

The telecommunications department has set up the labs for which the government will provide 80% of the capital expenditure and 100% of operational expenses for the next four years.

Institutions including the Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Information Technology, National Institutes of Technology, and other engineering colleges will foot 20% of capital expenditure for the labs.

Each lab will have at least 10 faculty members and 50 students. At least five start-ups or Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises will be engaged with each lab to test or develop their solutions. Each lab must develop or test at least 10 products or solutions annually.

The lab equipment will include 5G standalone infrastructure (mid-band), 5G SIMs, dongles, IoT gateway, router, application server, etc being shipped out starting in December. All the labs are expected to be fully functional by March 2024, an official said on the condition of anonymity.

In his address at the IMC, Modi said India is among the world’s top three start-up ecosystems and the second largest mobile phone manufacturer. “Our electronics exports are upwards of ₹2 lakh crore now,” said Modi. He listed the evolution of telecommunications and digital infrastructure in India over his tenure. Modi also spoke about cybersecurity and said threats to it were discussed during the G20 summit in New Delhi in September. “If our entire value chain resides within India, it will be easier to secure it.”

Union communications and electronics and information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said telecom equipment from India was being exported to over 70 countries. He added the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly, the governing conference of the International Telecommunication Union’s standardisation sector, and one of its three world conferences, will be held in India in 2024.

Held once every four years, the conference was scheduled to be held in Hyderabad in 2020 but rescheduled to 2022 in Geneva because of the pandemic.

Aditya Birla Group chairperson Kumar Mangalam Birla, who also spoke at the IMC’s inaugural ceremony, lauded India’s digital public infrastructure. “Many countries across the world are ready to adopt India’s digital public infrastructure assets across identity, payments, and data management,” Birla said.

Reliance Jio chairperson Akash Ambani and Bharti Enterprises chairperson Sunil Bharti Mittal also spoke at IMC.