Telecom companies, gear makers divided over India’s 5G spectrum trials

Telecom gear makers as well as telecom companies are divided on the need to go in for elaborate 5G trial runs, especially as they have waited for nearly two years for the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to give them permission.

The DoT yesterday gave the green signal to gear makers Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and C-Dot to go in for 5G trial runs with telcos which include Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, Reliance Jio and BSNL. Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE have been kept out.

“In June 2019 when Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Communications Minister, promised to give permission for 5G trials in 100 days, there were only 26 global operators which were offering some kind of 5G service,” said an executive with a telecom gear maker. “That meant there was a good reason for testing the technology and also for spectral efficiency. Now that has become irrelevant.”

He argues that, according to Global Mobile Suppliers’ Association (GSA) data for April, there are now 435 operators in 133 countries investing in 5G or in trial runs and as many as 162 operators in 68 countries who have already launched 5G mobile services.

“Clearly the technology is now proven. There are already established use case scenarios which are commercially relevant out there, such as private smart factories or last mile connectivity in broadband to homes, therefore trial runs are not needed,” he said.

Top executives at Nokia India have publicly endorsed the same view, while welcoming the government’s statement on trials. In an interview to Business Standard, Amit Marwah, head of marketing and corporate affairs with Nokia India, said: “It would have made sense earlier when 5G was being introduced globally but now it’s an established technology. India is using the same bands – 3,500 MHZ – as countries like the US and Europe,” said Marwah.

However, he said that the current trials should be used to establish India-specific use cases which are ready once 5G rolls out.

Even the Cellular Operators Association of India’s director general S P Kochhar admitted that some, but not all, of its members shared this view.

While giving the green signal for trials, the DoT has asked telcos also to have trial runs with the indigenous 5G technology (developed by IITs) which follows a different standard and is in rural India. The technology is designed to work in rural India with low-speed mobility powered by large cells with a radius of 12 kilometres.

Apart from the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, the umbrella organisation for standards organizations which develop protocols for mobile telecommunications, the move to push two standards for 5G has been opposed by major telcos such as Airtel.

Incumbent operators have pointed out that it will only increase network costs as well as the prices of mobile devices because manufacturers will have to make them specifically for India and will not get the advantage of economies of scale.

They also say that interoperability will be a key issue as Indians won’t be able to use their mobile phones in other countries if a different standard is followed. What’s more, operators say it will derail India’s ambition to become a global hub for manufacturing of 5G equipment and mobile devices.

But for Reliance Jio, the decision to go ahead with the trials makes eminent sense. It has been pushing for permission to test its indigenously developed 5G technology that it wants to sell to the world.

This permission, despite repeated reminders to the DoT, has not been granted. Even now, despite Reliance Jio wanting permission for trial runs based on its technology to run for two years, the DoT has given it only six months.

Sources say that Reliance Jio, owing to the delay in testing its technology and hardware, decided last October to use a live network of Verizon in the US to test its 5G technology.

Those in the know say that while it will be undertaking trial runs in Mumbai and Delhi (on its own and also with Samsung), Reliance Jio is finalizing plans on which semi-urban and rural locations it wants to undertake trial runs.

While the DoT has said that the trials will give telcos the opportunity to test use case scenarios of 5G in areas such as drone-based agriculture monitoring, tele-medicine, tele-education and virtual reality, the telcos are not so convinced.

As one telco executive asked: “What are the use case scenarios which will be valid in India will depend on their commercial viability? While using 5G technology in farming, for example, is great, the question is whether farmers will pay for such services. That, only a commercial study will tell.” Business Standard News