29 Mar 2021: PIB Summary & Analysis

March 29th, 2021, PIB:- Download PDF Here

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. India-US Strategic Energy Partnership
2. Women-led startup develops product for low-cost internet in rural areas

1. India-US Strategic Energy Partnership

Context:

Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas and the new US Secretary of Energy agreed to revamp the India-US Strategic Energy Partnership.

Details:

• The two leaders agreed to prioritise greater collaboration in cleaner energy sector biofuels, CCUS, hydrogen production and carbon sequestration through technology exchange, joint R&D through Partnership to Advance Clean Energy Research (PACE-R), among other initiatives.
• Both sides agreed to convene the third meeting of a revamped India-US Strategic Energy Partnership at an early date.

Also read: India – US Relations

2. Women-led startup develops product for low-cost internet in rural areas

Context:

A women-led startup ‘Astrome’ has developed deep-tech for reliable low-cost internet services to rural areas.

Details:

• Astrome has developed an innovative wireless product that gives fibre like bandwidth at a fraction of the cost of fibre to help telecom operators deliver reliable low-cost internet services to suburban and rural areas.
• The wireless product called Giga Mesh could enable telecom operators deploy quality, high-speed rural telecom infrastructure at 5 times lower cost.
• The deep tech startup was incubated at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, and supported by DST-ABI Woman Startup Program of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India.
• The product has been granted a patent in India and the US.
• About the product:
  • The multi-beam E-band product, Giga Mesh, packs 6 Point-to-Point E-band radios in one, thereby distributing the cost of the device over multiple links and hence reducing capital expenditure.
  • The radio provides long-range and multi-Gbps data throughput at each link.
  • Features like automatic link alignment, dynamic power allocation between links, and remote link formation help operators achieve significant operating expenditure cost reduction.

Background:

• Making available internet access to remote places in countries like India is difficult because laying fibre is too expensive.
• There is a need for wireless backhaul products that can deliver low cost, high data capacity, and wide reach.
• The currently available wireless backhaul products either do not provide sufficient data speeds or the required range or are very expensive to deploy.

Read previous PIB here.

March 29th, 2021, PIB:- Download PDF Here