5G Technology: India’s Preparedness

India is one of the fastest adopters of digital technologies in the world. It is on the path of transition towards a digital revolution. The telecom sector will play a huge role in making India a global digital hub. It is estimated that India’s digital economy will potentially reach $1 trillion by 2025, which will be mainly driven by increased proliferation of smart phones, improved internet penetration, growth of mobile broadband, growth of data and social media.

• Developing and deploying 5G technology will be the answer to the aspirations of India’s rapidly growing economy and aspirations of the people.

5G Technology

5G is the 5th generation of mobile network that aims to deliver multi-Gbps peak data speeds, ultra-low latency, improved reliability, massive network capacity, increased availability, and a uniform user experience to users. It is expected to provide “4A- anytime, anywhere, anyone, anything” connectivity.

Features

Data speed in 5G is expected to be around 10 Gbps with peak speeds of 20Gbps. It is 500% higher than 4G.

• It is being designed for less than 1 millisecond latency.
• It will fundamentally move the processing ability of handsets to mobile cloud. It will improve battery life of mobile devices. There are significant improvements in energy efficiency, spectrum efficiency, network efficiency as well as efficiency of other connected systems.
• It will use higher frequency bands (30-300 GHz) which will provide better capacity, bandwidth scalability and lesser interference. It will deliver up to 1,000 times more capacity than 4G, which will enable seamless connectivity across multiple devices.

India’s Preparedness

• National Digital Communication Policy: The Department of Telecom (DoT), through its Draft National Digital Communication Policy (DNDCP) has emphasised on creating an actionable plan for the rollout of 5G application and services.
  • DoT also setup a high level forum ’5G India 2020’ to develop the roadmap for operationalising 5G services in India by the year 2020. Through this forum, all key stakeholders in the industry have worked towards developing the right eco-system for 5G commercialization.
• 5G Testing: The government launched the initiative ‘Building an End-to-End 5G Test Bed’ to promote innovation and research in 5G. The three-year programme began in March 2018. Ericsson installed the first public access 5G test bed at IIT Delhi in July 2018.
  • Bharti Airtel and Huawei have successfully conducted India’s first 5G network trial under a test setup at Airtel’s network experience centre in Gurgaon. Bharti Airtel has also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Nokia and Ericsson to support the company in its preparations for 5G rollout.
• Spectrum Auction: The DoT received 16 applications for 5G field trials and began the first 5G spectrum auction, with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) establishing the base fee at Rs 492 crore per unit for 5G in the band of 3.3–3.6 GHz. Full 5G spectrum auctions are expected to be held in mid-2022.
• 5G Standards: India has developed its own variant of the global standard for 5G, known as TDSI-RIT. It offers enhanced rural coverage and reduces costs to cover a certain defined area.
• Government Programs: More than 300,000 km of fiber is planned to be deployed under the government’s ‘BharatNet’ program providing fiber connectivity to rural India.
• It will accelerate 5G penetration across the country and expand the digital revolution to rural India.
• Government has also rolled out PM WANI scheme to expand Internet access through public Wi-Fi networks.

Challenges of Launching 5G in India

Following challenges pose hurdles to a successful launch of 5G in India-

• Inadequate Connectivity: Fibre connectivity is very low in India, which is at present only 30% of India’s telecom towers. Fibre-optic connections only make up 0.5% of India's broadband network.
• Telecom Hardware: India is highly dependent upon imports for its telecom equipment. Though the Government has launched a Production Linked Incentive Scheme for Telecom and Network Equipment, it will take another 3-4 years for its benefits to materialise.
• High Spectrum Pricing: India’s 5G spectrum pricing is almost 7 times higher than the UK, and multiple times costlier than the global average. The telecom companies are already cash strapped and require significant government support.
• Concerns related to 5G Standards: Stakeholders in the telecom sector are concerned that TDSI-RIT standards developed by India are not globally harmonised. It could lead to increased costs for network and customer devices, and interoperability issues.
• Lack of 5G Use Case Labs: Sufficient use case labs for 5G have not been developed in India. A use case acts as a software modeling technique that defines the features to be implemented and the resolution of any errors that may be encountered.

5G connections in India are expected to reach 88 million by 2025. India’s successful implementation of 5G will require adequate spectrum availability and affordability, developing competitive local 5G manufacturing and most importantly, increase in penetration of digital infrastructure in the country.