White Rabbit technology successfully distributes Indian Standard Time across 400 km of operational telecom fiber, supporting India’s “One Nation, One Time” initiative.

New Dehli, India – September 09, 2026 – Safran Electronics & Defense announced its contribution to a major milestone in India’s national timing infrastructure: the successful dissemination of Indian Standard Time (IST) over approximately 400 km of operational telecommunications fiber using White Rabbit Z16 technology. The achievement supports the Government of India’s “One Nation, One Time” initiative, which aims to strengthen the resilience, security and sovereignty of the country’s official time distribution network.

The demonstration connected Bengalore and Chennai through a live telecom network, proving that ultra-precise national time can be distributed over long distances while maintaining sub-nanosecond synchronization accuracy. The project represents the first dissemination of Indian Standard Time over White Rabbit across a live telecom network, marking an important step toward resilient terrestrial timing infrastructures that complement satellite-based timing services.

India’s successful deployment demonstrates how White Rabbit technology can provide deterministic, fiber-based time transfer at national scale while supporting strategic initiatives for digital sovereignty and critical infrastructure resilience.

Safran’s White Rabbit technology at the heart of the project

Safran Electronics & Defense supplied its White Rabbit timing technology, enabling deterministic synchronization across the 400 km operational telecom network with sub-nanosecond accuracy.

Originally developed for the world’s most demanding scientific research facilities, White Rabbit combines Precision Time Protocol (IEEE 1588), Synchronous Ethernet and precise delay compensation to deliver highly accurate and deterministic time and frequency transfer over fiber networks. Today, the technology is increasingly adopted for telecommunications, critical infrastructure, finance, defense, aerospace and other applications where resilient synchronization is mission critical.

“The successful dissemination of Indian Standard Time across a 400 km live telecommunications network demonstrates that White Rabbit has reached a new level of operational maturity,” said Alexandre Lenoble, Head of GNSS & Timing Business Line at Safran Electronics & Defense. “This achievement illustrates how ultra-precise terrestrial timing networks are becoming strategic assets for digital sovereignty and critical infrastructure resilience. We are proud that Safran’s White Rabbit technology contributed to this landmark project.“

Enabling the future of trusted timing

This deployment reinforces Safran Electronics & Defense’s commitment to supporting governments, telecom operators and critical infrastructure providers with trusted Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) technologies.

As countries seek to strengthen the resilience of national timing services and reduce dependence on any single source of synchronization, White Rabbit provides a scalable, interoperable and future-ready solution capable of delivering sub-nanosecond timing performance across metropolitan, regional and national fiber networks.