New Delhi, Aug 6 (IANS) A total of 110 projects related to 5G and 6G, amounting to Rs 304.70 crore, have been approved under the Telecom Technology Development Fund (TTDF) scheme till June 30, the Parliament was informed on Wednesday.

The TTDF Scheme was launched on October 1, 2022 to fund Research and Development (R&D) and innovation in telecom technologies, fostering collaboration between academia, start-ups, MSMEs, research institutes, and industry to enhance the telecom ecosystem in India, Dr. Pemmasani Chandra Sekhar, Minister of State of Communications and Rural Development, said in a written reply in Lok Sabha.

The duration of the approved R&D projects ranges from 1 to 5 years.

These projects are currently in the initial stages of development. For 5G and 6G advancements, the TTDF scheme is supporting various technological domain funding involving government and private institutions, MSMEs and start-ups, etc, the minister said.

Meanwhile, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has developed the Financial Fraud Risk Indicator (FRI), which is a risk-based metric that classifies a mobile number to have been associated with Medium, High, or Very High risk of financial fraud, the minister informed the house.

FRI empowers stakeholders-especially banks, Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) and Unified Payment Interface (UPI) service providers, to prioritise enforcement and take additional customer protection measures in case a mobile number has a high risk. FRI is available through the Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP) to the stakeholders.

RBI has issued separate advisories to banks and Payment Service Operators (PSO) for integration of FRI with their respective systems and to adopt necessary real-time response protocols (like alerts, transaction delays, warnings, transaction decline, etc), the minister stated.

According to the reply, based on the Action Taken Reports (ATRs) submitted on DIP, 34 banks, financial institutions, and UPI service providers have frozen 10.02 lakh bank accounts, payment wallets, and placed debit and credit restrictions on 3.05 lakh bank accounts, payment wallets.

The Digital Intelligence Unit (DIU) project of DoT has various constituents for curbing the misuse of telecom resources for cybercrime and financial fraud, the Minister highlighted.

–IANS

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