India, Aug. 28 -- The Department of Telecommunications (DoT), under the Ministry of Communications, and the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) have signed a five-year agreement to establish an end-to-end optical network testbed at C-DOT's campus in New Delhi.

The agreement was signed on 27 August 2026. The testbed, funded and supported by DoT, is intended to provide an environment for testing and validating optical communication technologies developed by Indian startups and industry before they are deployed commercially.

The initiative is aimed at addressing a key gap in the development cycle of telecom technologies moving solutions from laboratory development to testing in network environments that more closely resemble real-...