- Situation
- The Department of Telecommunications ran a national programme to fund a hundred 5G labs.
- Complication
- Getting one onto a campus was a bid rather than a build, and a general case for deserving a lab would not win it.
- Question
- What makes a funder say yes to this campus?
- Answer
- Say what the lab will produce, meaning the specific research it would carry. ₹40 lakh+ was secured and the lab rolled out in three days; it now serves 50+ students and 8+ faculty.
What I did
I sat in the meeting with the DoT officials and set out what the department would actually get from funding a lab here: the specific research the space would carry, not a general case for deserving it. Once the lab was approved, I coordinated the three-day infrastructure rollout with university leadership and government stakeholders.
From a funding meeting to a working lab
- 01 Make the case Set out for DoT officials the research the lab would carry
- 02 Secure funding ₹40 lakh+ under the national hundred-lab programme
- 03 Roll out Infrastructure set up in three days
- 04 In use 50+ students, 8+ faculty, 10+ research projects
Source: COEP 5G Lab, January – April 2025
The result
The lab now supports more than 50 students and 8 faculty from several colleges and hosts more than 10 5G use-case research projects. The telecom work elsewhere on this site depends on it.
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