CT media partner at Bharat Exhibition’s 5G India 2022-Inaugural session-A report

The inaugural session, Driving Next Phase of Economic Growth with 5G of 5G India 2022 organised by Bharat Exhibitions on September 7, 2022. The opening address was made by Rajat Mukarji, Director General, Broadband India Forum on behalf of TV Ramachandran, President, Broadband India Forum. He said, it is expected that telecom companies alone could invest up to Rs 500 billion over the next five years in building 5G networks. The largest expenditure for many such service providers will be in small cells to drive wireless capacity. The government needs to step in and provide an enabling and facilitating licensing and regulatory environment to help in meeting this objective.

Dr. Issam Toufik, Director, 3GPP Mobile Competence Centre emphasised that many new players joining the 3PPP partnership including from sectors as aeronautics, agriculture, healthcare and satellite communications and many more emphasises that 5G would help industries achieve huge growth.

RK Saxena, Wireless Advisor, Department of Telecommunications Ministry of Communications, Government of India said that what made the success of the previous generations and 5G is the fact that we have one global standard. It is extremely important that all sectors and all partners come together and support that we make 6G too a success by offering one standard that is deployable globally.

Lt. Gen. Dr. SP Kochhar, Director General, COAI also addressed the audience. He said, the well-being of every citizen will to dictated with 5G applications, and the early movers will adopt and bring benefit to its users faster. It is not the individual subscriber who will lead adoption of 5G, it is the enterprise. And from the enterprise will come in direct benefits to the consumer, and the services that are offered by the enterprise will force the consumer to then adopt 5G. The common consumer today is standalone if you take away the enterprise architect with the industry.

The keynote speaker Nuno Saraiva, VP Sales Consulting, Oracle Communications, Global, emphasized that moving forward, the 5G networks will be run by multiple vendors, and the networks that took three to four years to be set up, will be deployed within a year. Exposing the networks to external innovation at this stage is critical.

Avinash Mittal, Senior VP & Program Director Technology Enabler, Telenor said that we believe in our modernisation journey with 5G, and are not investing anymore in 4G. We are putting great effort across the various countries where we have presence, in total collaboration with our industry partners, in bringing the respective use cases to the various industry verticals.

Atul Sachdeva, EVP and National Planning & Deployment Head, Bharti Airtel said that 5G technology has matured over the last two years. India is fortunate on timing to get more benefits as use cases, technology etc to introduce 5G now. 5G is a lifestyle change, not just an upgradation. Productivity will increase, resulting in economic growth; it will impact socio changes as in education, agriculture and healthcare en masse. Sustainability as lower pollution, and lower transmission power are also assured. Airtel is 5G ready and will be rolling out 5G shortly. 5G devices will need to be affordable for it to take off, and chipset issue resolved.

Ravi Gandhi, President and Chief of Public Policy & Regulatory, Reliance Jio said he disagreed with earlier speakers. 5G is a new technology. 5G reduces latency with small cells, and offers high bandwidth and more spectral efficiency. Use cases will now no longer revolve around voice. Some new use cases were there from 4G, 5G with its high capacity and low latency will bring even more. For instance, immediately we may see the exit of playstations, and e-commerce may change to 3D views. Use cases for agriculture etc may take time. Private networks and open public cloud , open RAN and private networks, security and open networks are oxymorons, will exist and will need to be addressed. Integrated networks and seamless connectivity is what we can expect from 5G, with one number and one device.

Sandeep Saxena, Head of Pre-Sales in Mobile Networks, Nokia India reiterated that 5G-enabled industries have the potential to add $8 trillion to global GDP by 2030. Thousands of devices will talk to each other. In the last one year, with 5G trial spectrum, CSPs in India have demonstrated multiple use cases in live networks across many use cases.

The issue before us next is, how to accelerate 5G in India and develop the ecosystem. With spectrum auction already done, and successfully, now need to focus on device ecosystem, availability and affordability of 5G handsets; and availability of IoT devices . Electronic infrastructure; the backhaul, 70% sites today need backhaul; e-band microwave for robust backhaul; and availability of robust end-to-end security solution are priority areas.

Next is digitisation of network deployment and the speed with which 5G needs to be rolled out, This includes 5G core, 5G radio, backhaul, 5G base stations, digital site engineering, digital design, digital optimisation. In a nutshell, need to get zero touch implementation of the sites, so as get faster rollouts.

Nokia has been working with startups, supporting to make India specific use cases, test them in the Nokia labs in simulated 5G environment. 14 ministries under DoT are also working toward this.

Also need to ensure ease of doing business policies and practices and processes need to be streamlined. Also need a platform for creating awareness to understand 5G. 5G is poised to result in a major transformation for citizens, industry and the country.

Kunal Bajaj, CEO & Co-Founder, CloudExtel conducted a rapid fire panel discussion on two issues, is India ready to launch 5G by end of the year and will we able to monetize the 5G network?

And Shashi Dharan, Managing Director, Bharat Exhibitions thanked the esteemed speakers and the delegates and invited them for the rest of the two-day event.

Inaugural video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXOFP55md_k

CT Bureau