FreeStream Applied sciences, incubated on the Indian Institute of Expertise (IIT) Kanpur, together with Lava Worldwide and HMD International, right this moment introduced plans to launch Direct-to-Cellular (D2M) enabled units in India forward of large-scale area trials. The announcement, made on the event of the World Audio Visible and Leisure Summit (WAVES) 2025, marks a big step towards the mass deployment of D2M know-how, which makes use of terrestrial TV broadcast airwaves to broadcast reside TV, video, audio, and textual content messages (multimedia content material) of public and nationwide significance—akin to leisure, sports activities, academic programming, and emergency alerts—on to telephones with out the necessity for Wi-Fi or web service.
Additionally Learn: The Silent Part-Out of FM Radio in Smartphones: What’s Behind It?
Units Powered by Saankhya Labs’ SL-3000 Chipset
The initiative aligns with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s imaginative and prescient of “Viksit Bharat” and helps the federal government’s ‘Make in India’ and ‘Design in India’ missions, in response to the official assertion.
As beforehand introduced, the upcoming low-cost characteristic telephones, smartphones, and tablets will likely be powered by the SL-3000 D2M chipset developed by Saankhya Labs, now a part of Tejas Networks. Tejas Networks has additionally developed the core community and infrastructure options required for D2M deployments, in collaboration with US-based Sinclair. Dwell community testing of the know-how has been underway for a number of years via a partnership between Prasar Bharati, IIT Kanpur, and Tejas Networks, Sinclair mentioned.
Partnerships with Tejas Networks and Sinclair
Sumeet Nindrajog, Director of Free Stream Applied sciences, mentioned, “We’re happy that Lava and HMD are doing the groundwork to quickly create a viable machine ecosystem for a nationwide deployment roadmap. Their willingness to produce in scale is one of the best vote of confidence for the longer term success of D2M.”
Lava Worldwide’s Government Director, Sanjeev Agarwal, mentioned, “Our D2M featurephone design incorporates the modem and the apps in a intelligent strategy to preserve low price, which is a trademark of our units.”
Ravi Kunwar, CEO and VP (India and APAC) of HMD International mentioned, “We’re excited to be part of the D2M journey. This groundbreaking, first-of-its-kind platform worldwide permits our customers to entry an enormous array of multimedia content material.”
Parag Naik, Government Vice President at Tejas Networks and co-founder of Saankhya Labs, highlighted, “The telephones are powered by Saankhya’s award successful SL-3000 chipset, which is the foundational D2M enabler. Now we have additionally developed the Core Community platform that can allow supply of focused advertisements, CDN offload, academic content material, emergency alerts and different apps that can empower the customers furthering PM Modi’s imaginative and prescient of a digitally empowered India.”
Additionally Learn: Prasar Bharati Launches OTT Platform WAVES at IFFI 2024
D2M to Remodel Content material Entry for Tens of millions
Chris Ripley, President and CEO of Sinclair, mentioned, “The massive-scale adoption of ATSC 3.0 in inexpensive cell units vindicates Sinclair’s forethought in main US and world deployment of this broadcast customary as ‘cell first’ and in investing in Made by India know-how. To fulfill future 6G targets, we’re spearheading the subsequent launch of the usual – ‘Broadcast to Every thing’ (B2X) which is able to unleash subsequent technology broadcast apps for quite a few verticals.”
The deployment of D2M know-how is predicted to revolutionise content material entry for tens of millions of cell customers, significantly in areas with restricted web connectivity.
