The government has decided to allocate 5 per cent of Universal Services Obligation Fund (USOF) for research and development of telecommunications technology, said the Economic Survey 2023-24 tabled in Parliament on Monday. At present, the government has a corpus of around Rs 80,000 crore collected under USOF which has now been renamed as Digital Bharat Nidhi. "Telecommunication technology development requires significantly large and patient capital for R&D and commercialisation. To address this, the government has decided that an allocation of 5 per cent of annual collections from Universal Services Obligation Fund would be made available for funding R&D in the telecom sector," the survey said. According to the survey, the Telecom Technology Development Fund formulated in 2022 has seen significant participation from startups, MSMEs, academia and industry. The survey said the government dedicated '5G Test Bed' to the nation in 2022, providing an end-to-end testing facility, ...