PIB Summary- 29th March, 2021 | PIB (Press Information Bureau) Summary - UPSC PDF Download

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.

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.