US chipmaker Intel said India is fast becoming a vital hub in the global AI and 6G innovation network, backed by its massive data scale, expanding R&D ecosystem, and rising capabilities in telecom software and silicon design. The company urged stronger Indian participation in shaping global 6G standards to take its innovations to scale.
“The scale is here. Whether it’s large language models, smaller AI models, or classical machine learning, you need massive amounts of data to train them — and India and China are where that data exists,” Udayan Mukherjee, senior fellow and chief architect at Intel's Network and Communication Group, told Moneycontrol in an interview.
“The ecosystem being built in India, for India, is gaining real traction,” he added, referring to the rapid expansion of local network design and manufacturing capacity.
Intel, which operates its largest R&D and engineering centre outside the US in Bengaluru, is developing both silicon and software platforms used in next-generation telecom networks globally. Mukherjee said much of the company’s core design work for radio, packet core, and platform systems now originates in India.
Full Video Interview: Why India Is Key to Intel’s Global AI and 6G Ambitions
India’s role in shaping 6G standards
Mukherjee emphasized that India must play a stronger role in 6G standardisation to ensure that its innovations gain global scale rather than remain local adaptations.
“You need to put all your innovations into the global standards. You don’t want to do something custom that’s different from the standard because then you lose scale,” he said. “To achieve true scale, India’s innovations must align with international frameworks, even as companies build intellectual property on top of them.”
He said the ongoing discussions and work led by the Indian government on 6G research, open networks, and spectrum use are “steps in the right direction,” particularly given the country’s renewed push to lead rather than follow in next-generation telecom development.
Open RAN evolution and Intel’s role
While Open RAN (ORAN) remains at a nascent stage in India, Intel has been at the centre of global deployments in the US, Japan, and Europe. Mukherjee explained that ORAN’s core value lies in decoupling software from hardware through virtualization, allowing operators to source components from multiple vendors instead of being locked into one supplier.
“ORAN is all about choice — you can have radios from one company, distributed and central units from another, and RIC or OSS from someone else,” he said. “In traditional RAN, you are locked into one vendor like Ericsson or Nokia. ORAN breaks that model.”
He acknowledged that while the initial cost of open and disaggregated systems may be higher, the lifetime economics are superior due to flexibility, competition, and easier upgrades.
“The initial cost is slightly higher, but it’s coming down fast. Once you’re on a virtualized, software-defined platform, upgrades — say from 5G to 5G Advanced — are much simpler. You don’t need new hardware for every evolution.”
Intel provides silicon, reference software (such as FlexRAN), and systems to major network equipment vendors, including Nokia and Ericsson, helping them design and optimize solutions on Intel’s platform. The company also designs custom ASICs for telecom workloads and collaborates closely with Indian telcos such as BSNL, Reliance Jio, and Airtel, either directly or through OEM partners.
Indian telcos have cited ecosystem maturity and integration costs as reasons for the slow adoption of ORAN. Mukherjee acknowledged these challenges but said they are diminishing as specifications mature and multi-vendor interoperability improves.
“If you buy everything from one vendor, you may get price concessions, but you’re locked in. With open systems, multiple vendors need to work together, which initially raises cost. But specifications from the ORAN Alliance are making interoperability real, and costs are falling,” he said.
He added that Intel’s open licensing approach for its reference software encourages innovation among Indian system integrators and local manufacturers, which will further reduce dependency on single-vendor networks.
The AI-native network: 6G’s defining feature
Looking ahead, Mukherjee said the 6G network will be both cloud-native and AI-native, meaning intelligence will be embedded at multiple network layers to optimize performance, efficiency, and automation.
“In Layer 1 — the distributed unit — we are using AI to improve channel estimation and MIMO performance. The jury is still out on whether AI can outperform the best algorithms, but experimentation is happening at scale,” he said.
AI will also transform how networks are deployed, managed, and maintained, according to him. Tasks such as deployment automation, fault analysis, and predictive maintenance can already be enhanced through machine learning and large language models trained on operational data.
“Day-zero to day-two operations — deployment, debugging, root-cause analysis — can be automated using AI. You can train models on log data to identify and fix network issues faster. This kind of operational efficiency is achievable now; you don’t have to wait for 6G,” Mukherjee said.
Even as telcos worldwide continue to invest in 5G and prepare for 6G, monetization remains a challenge. Mukherjee noted that while data consumption and fixed wireless access are growing rapidly, most operators are still struggling to convert that demand into new revenue streams.
“Even after all the promises of 5G, monetization still largely comes from data and fixed wireless access,” he said. “Some Industry 4.0 and private network use cases are emerging, but progress is slow.”
He said future networks must become intelligent and compute-embedded to create new value propositions.“If telecom stays just a fat pipe, you can only monetize data — and that’s falling in price. The real opportunity is in intelligent networks that combine compute, analytics, and AI at the edge.”
Mukherjee underscored the need for continuous collaboration between telcos, vendors, government, and academia to accelerate innovation and commercialisation.
“In the US, multiple funding programs support radio development and new applications. India is also moving in that direction through initiatives like BharatNet. Collaboration among BSNL, Jio, Airtel, vendors, and universities will be crucial,” he said.
Despite current monetisation challenges, Mukherjee said the demand for data itself — driven by streaming, AI, and new digital applications — continues to fuel network expansion. “If nothing else, because of Netflix, AI, and others, data demand is growing exponentially. That alone is keeping networks full and vendors busy. But the next step is adding intelligence to truly transform how telecom operates,” he said.
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