Reimagining Road Tech in India: Beyond Safety

India’s roads are getting smarter. Cars are increasingly able to “talk” to each other and to the infrastructure around them – how Tesla cars alert drivers about nearby vehicles and pedestrians. This technology, called Vehicle-to-Everything or V2X, is already being used around the world to make roads safer, and is fast emerging as a multi-billion-dollar global industry. But its potential goes far beyond safety alone. Globally, similar technology helps cities manage traffic, find parking, collect tolls, and even track vehicle emissions – turning everyday roads into smart, connected infrastructure. As countries like the US, Japan, and those across the EU race ahead in building this ecosystem, it’s time for India to catch up and stake its own claim in this emerging technology.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the authority responsible for regulating the telecommunications sector in India, has been studying how to bring this technology to our roads. In April 2026, it released a consultation paper inviting public comments on how V2X should be rolled out and regulated – including who should be allowed to set up the roadside equipment that makes this communication possible.

Here we present TQH’s submission in response to this consultation. Our central argument is that India’s approach to V2I should not stop at road safety. We recommend a single authorisation framework that opens non-safety use cases like tolling, parking, fleet management and traffic optimisation to private players, alongside government deployment of safety-critical services. To make this work, we propose that safety-related services carry no authorisation fee given their public-good nature, while commercial non-safety services attract only a nominal fee. Crucially, we argue that interoperability and open standards must be binding conditions of the authorisation itself, so that roadside units from different operators can communicate with each other, much like how every bank’s ATM works with every other bank’s card today.

Our goal is to help Indian authorities successfully build smarter roads faster, in a way that is financially sustainable, efficient and suitable for India’s vehicular density.