CUTS International has managed to bag a grant under the second round of the Australia-India Cyber and Critical Technology Partnership (AICCTP) programme coordinated by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for its project - ‘Ethical 6G - Identifying Elements of an Ethical Framework for 6G and Creating Opportunities for India and Australia’. For this, CUTS has partnered with the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIITB) and the Australian Risk Policy Institute (ARPI). The objective of AICCTP is to strengthen and encourage practical collaboration and cooperation between the two countries to shape a global technology environment which reflects a shared vision of a free, open, and rules-based Indo-Pacific.
6G Needs to be Carefully Deployed With Appropriate Ethical Controls
The program promotes the companies and the organisations (Indian and Australian) which are working towards the global development of ethical standards around emerging and critical technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), next-generation connectivity standards, artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, big data, and more. With this project, the goal is to build an actual practical cooperative environment for collaboration between India and Australia for developing critical telecommunication technologies, including 6G, so that an understanding of the ethical framework around 6G deployment and the 6G standard making can be explored. Many countries are still stuck with 5G deployment and research, while countries such as India and Australia have already started exploring the 6G standard of connectivity. India and Australia could very well get some early mover advantage with 6G. Professor V Sridhar of the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IITB), said that 6G needs to be carefully deployed with appropriate ethical controls or appropriate deployment. That said, it isn’t just India and Australia, but countries in Europe, then China, Korea, and more have also started their research around 6G. Telecom vendors such as Huawei and Samsung are already making moves in the direction of 6G.
