Indian Standards for 5G Rollout to be Ready by 2018

Left to Right:  Adrian Scrase, Head of Mobile Competence Centre, 3GPP & CTO, ETSI; Chandan Kumar, Director – Marketing & Public Affairs, Huawei; Shyam P. Mardikar, CTO (Mobile Networks), Bharti Airtel Limited; D.P. De, Sr. DDG, Telecommunication Engineering Centre; Rajan S Mathews, Director General, Cellular Operators Association of India; Jalaj Choudhri, EVP (Networks), Reliance Communications Limited; and Dharma Rajan, Lead NFV Solutions Architect, VMware, USA

India is getting future ready and has started serious work on identifying and formalizing the standards for the rollout of 5G. The standards are likely to be ready by 2018. This was stated by DP De, Sr. DDG, Telecommunication Engineering Centre (TEC) at the 5G India 2017 Conference. The first 5G India 2017 Conference was organized in national capital by Bharat Exhibitions with support from COAI, 3GPP, TSDSI, and saw massive participation from various telecommunication industry verticals including networks, service providers, manufacturers, etc. The introductory address and inaugural discussion regarding the future of 5G was initiated by Adrian Scrase, chief technical officer, ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) and Head of 3GPP MCC (Mobile Competence Core).

“5G will be an overarching umbrella of networks rather than a replacement technology and will usher in significant economic, political, and environmental benefits,” pointed out Adrian Scrase during his introductory address.

According to industry representatives and sectoral experts gathered at the venue, the key drivers for 5G rollout and adoption are going to be massive anticipated increase in data consumption, fast increasing digitized life and services, growth of smart cities, and the need to have an all-encompassing network architecture, which can utilize all available spectrum bands rather than replace the existing networks.

“Connected devices, digitized lifestyle where almost every aspect of human life will be consumed digitally calls for a new paradigm shift in telecommunication eco-system. We have moved from the voice phase to video consumption and next phase will be virtuality, which will demand humungous data availability, and networks have to evolve to keep pace. This will be a real challenge. Networks will have to become flat, ubiquitous, and nearer to consumers in the coming days to cater to fast-changing digitized life style,” said Shyam P Mardikar, CTO (Mobile Networks), Bharti Airtel Limited.

“5G will address the requirements of the coming decade. 5G architecture is targeting different spectrum bands where each will play different roles and within the emerging scheme of things, C-band and Group 30/40 are emerging as the globally harmonized bands. Enhanced user experience, dynamic spectrum sharing, and pairing of bands will be the mainstay of 5G architecture,” said Radhey Shyam Sarda, director, wireless solution sales, Huawei.

Rajan S Mathews, director general, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), said that consumers side demand, resource deployment, and commercial viability will be the main drivers for the operators for 5G rollout. It may be easy to rollout 5G in a country like Japan or South Korea but India is a fundamentally different market with diverse needs. There would be huge financial and structural challenges. We have to make India-specific case for 5G.

Experts across the board did agree that sooner or later the telecommunication services will migrate to 5G architecture and time has come to start serious preparation for standardization and network upgradation.

Inaugural session was followed by two technical sessions, which deliberated on a host of issues related to 5G ecosystem including network up-gradation, product support and development, policy and regulation, IoT, security challenges, and other issues.

Making 5G India 2017 a truly global platform to conduct business, global players such as Huawei, VMware, Keysight Technologies, Juniper, RedHat, Rohde & Schwarz, RV Solutions, and TrustinSoft showcased and presented their innovative and cutting-edge technologies to 500-plus industry audience at the event.