Ericsson’s 5G Testbed Suspends Work At IIT-Delhi

Launched with much fanfare by telecom minister Manoj Sinha and Ericsson president and CEO Börje Ekholm last year, Ericsson’s 5G innovation lab has stopped its 5G-related work around technology testing and use cases after its radiating spectrum license expired.

The lab was established in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, at the city campus in July 2018. The centre was set up with the aim to support the Indian government’s plans to foster a robust and vibrant 5G ecosystem in India.

People familiar with the matter said that Ericsson initially got an approval to use radiating spectrum for three months, which it renewed a couple of times. However, Ericsson was asked to pay commercial fee for the usage of trial spectrum now, hence the company stopped the work at the lab.

“They are now awaiting the recommendations of the telecom ministry panel on the spectrum for the test run. It will cover both non-radiating and radiating spectrum for 5G trials,” a person privy to the matter told ET.

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is yet to decide on stakeholders’ demand that trial spectrum be given for at least a year, compared with the three-months under current rules.

An Ericsson India spokesperson confirmed the development and said that Ericsson expects the radiating spectrum to be made available soon when the company will restart 5G use case development again.

“In 2018, we developed a number of 5G use cases as part of our collaboration with IIT Delhi and with leading Indian operators. We are not currently carrying out use case testing at the 5G Center of Excellence, due to the expiration of our spectrum license,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

In a separate statement to ET, IIT Delhi said that it is looking forward to collaborating with other institutes and evaluating requests from other institutes and organizations to use the testbed. “This period is being used to prepare the plan for using the testbed once license is available,” IIT Delhi said.

It added, “One UE, the Base station & 3.5GHz MIMO RF head are fully operational. However, the radio head is kept powered off for the time being as the licence has expired, and extension of the same is awaited”. It added that an application for license renewal is with the telecom department.

At the time of the launch, Sinha had urged the industry, academia, students and start-ups to leverage the Ericsson Innovation Lab to develop new 5G-based business models and applications in the field of agricultural, healthcare and smarter cities among others.

Ericsson’s rival Huawei is also looking to establish its own test bed in India in partnership with institutes like IITs. It has started discussions with academia and telcos to set it up to test the technology and identify new use cases.

“Huawei is open to spectrum in both 28 GHz and C-band for 5G trials. For a lab, it needs non-radiating spectrum for one year at least for successful trials, it is awaiting the recommendations of the 5G committed by the DoT,” a person aware of Huawei’s plan told ET.―Gadgets Now