By the end of this year, driving on India’s roads should become smarter and safer.
The government has paved the way for the rollout of connected vehicle safety technology, which will allow drivers to get alerts about sudden braking, collisions and other road hazards far beyond their line of sight.
A portion of the key 5.9 GHz band has been freed up for direct vehicle communications, according to a gazette notification dated 10 June seen by Mint. The new rules exempt in-car communication devices, known as on-board units (OBUs), from licensing requirements. According to the notification, the department of telecommunications (DoT) has delicensed 30 MHz of spectrum in the 5875-5905 MHz (5.9 GHz) band.
The establishment, maintenance or working of OBUs in a vehicle, for the sole purpose of cellular vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication, which is operated as part of an intelligent transport system in the 5875-5905 MHz frequency band, shall be permitted without assignment of radio frequency on non-interference, non-protection and non-exclusive basis, the government said in the notification.
Separately, on Thursday, the government exempted short-range automotive radar systems operating in the 77-81 GHz band from licensing requirements, which will allow advanced vehicle safety technologies such as collision avoidance and autonomous emergency braking in vehicles.
The decision to delicense the spectrum bands comes after telecom operators demanded the auction of spectrum and advocated a telco-led model for the rollout of connected vehicle technologies in the country.
“There was some pushback from telecom companies, but since cellular V2X is largely for road safety, it (spectrum for vehicle communication) has now been delicensed,” an auto industry executive said on condition of anonymity.
Queries emailed to the Cellular Operators Association of India did not elicit any response till press time
Key components
V2X has two main components: vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication. V2V enables vehicles to wirelessly exchange information about their speed, direction and braking patterns. V2I allows the sharing of data between vehicles and smart roadside units (RSUs) such as traffic signals, toll booths and overhead signs.
In a bid to prevent road accidents, the government wants to first roll out V2V, for which the licence-exempt use is allowed.
A taskforce set up by the ministry of road transport and highways—which includes members from the Automotive Research Association of India (Arai), the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam), the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), and DoT—has recommended a pilot project and immediate implementation of day-zero use-cases of the technology to address urgent road safety needs.
This includes emergency electronic brake alerts to prevent rear-end collisions, forward collision warnings, alerts in case of a high-speed vehicle from behind and queue warnings.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) is working on a framework for spectrum assignment and terms for V2I, which will enable RSUs to send real-time alerts to vehicles about hazards, traffic conditions and other developments beyond a driver's line of sight.
V2V and V2I together will create the foundation for V2X communication.
This is a significant step towards building a “unified electronics layer” across vehicles, said Abhijeet Sinha, national programme director of National Highways for EVs (NHEV), a body working on electric highway pilots. NHEV plans to use the technology and OBUs in its 1,380-km Delhi-Mumbai pilot trial, he added.
Deployment of V2X technology can also aid in the development of carmakers advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), which assists in braking and lane driving. With new variants of SUVs above ₹10 lakh equipped with ADAS technology, carmakers have increasingly been looking to refine ADAS indigenously for customers to help in safe driving in current road conditions.
“The decision to implement V2V technologies is a step in the right direction, improving road safety by using early warning technologies. Increased use of ADAS in combination with V2V technologies in vehicles, along with improved road infrastructure and higher road safety awareness, will elevate road safety in our country," Santosh Iyer, chief executive officer, Mercedes Benz India, told Mint.
Deployment challenges
According to Dhruba Sarma, senior vice president and business leader for connected vehicles at KPIT Technologies Ltd, coordinated action across vehicle manufacturers, telecom companies, infrastructure providers and regulators and a phased, cost-sensitive deployment strategy are needed for V2X adoption to move beyond pilot projects and gradually scale up across vehicle segments over the next decade.
"Scaling V2X in India is fundamentally an ecosystem, platform and business-model challenge. While the underlying technologies are mature, large-scale deployment in Indian conditions still requires validation across dense urban environments and mixed traffic scenarios,” Sarma said. “The key bottleneck is not just vehicle architecture but the lack of economically viable infrastructure rollout models, especially for roadside units and network connectivity.”
Sarma said that to scale effectively, manufacturers will need cost-optimized, software-defined platforms that enable selective activation of high-impact safety use-cases, starting with priority scenarios like intersection collision warnings and emergency vehicle alerts.
“Interoperability will require not just technical alignment but the establishment of national certification frameworks and regulatory clarity,” he said.
Arai, the testing and certification agency under the road ministry for automotive systems, raised similar concerns about shortcomings and interoperability. In a letter to the telecom regulator earlier this month, Arai noted that India's 210 million registered two-wheelers are structurally invisible to the global V2X architecture because the entire framework was designed for enclosed four-wheeled vehicles.
Arai also said V2X systems from different vendors failed to communicate with each other despite meeting individual certification standards.
“Mandatory interoperability test events with all certified vendor OBUs and RSUs must precede any scale deployment authorization,” Arai added.
Safety solutions
In September, the Broadband India Forum (BIF), which represents companies such as Meta, Google, Qualcomm and Amazon, had urged communications minister Jyotiraditya Scindia to delicense the 5.9 GHz band with the highest priority to introduce and scale V2V-based safety solutions.
India recorded 487,705 accidents and 177,177 fatalities due to road mishaps in 2024, according to government data. In February 2020, India joined over 80 countries in signing the Stockholm Declaration, pledging to reduce road deaths and injuries by 50% by 2030.
The government aims to roll out the technology by the end of the current year.