Indian Standards for 5G Rollout to be Ready by 2018

NEW DELHI: 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 the Shri D P De, Sr DDG, Telecommunication Engineering Centre (TEC) at the 5G India 2017 Conference here. TEC is the nodal agency of the Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications, Government of India responsible for drawing up of standards, generic requirements, interface requirements, service requirements and specifications for telecom products, services and networks.

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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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 is going to be massive anticipated increase in data consumption, fast increasing digitalized life and services, growth of smart cities and the need to have an all encompassing network architecture which can utilized all available spectrum band 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,” said Mr. Shyam P Mardikar, CTO (Mobile Networks), Bharti Airtel Limited.

“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,” added Mr. Mardikar.  He also pointed out that networks will have to become flat, ubiquitous and nearer to consumers in the coming days to cater to fast changing digitized life style.

5G will address the requirements of coming decade said Mr. Radhey Shyam Sarda, Director, Wireless Solution Sales, Huawei. He also pointed out that 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 is emerging as the globally harmonized bands.

Enhanced user experience, dynamic spectrum sharing, pairing of bands will be the mainstay of 5G architecture added Mr. Sarda.

Mr. 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,” advised Mr. Mathews.

VMware network function virtualisation common platform architecture has proven to be the deployment model for mobile core solutions says VMWare. It will become the foundation for 5G Networks.

Besides the above mentioned industry leaders, the inaugural session was presented by Mr. Jalaj Choudhri, EVP (Networks), Reliance Communications Ltd; Mr. Chandan Kumar, Director – Marketing & Public Affairs, Huawei; Mr. Dharma Rajan, Lead NFV Solutions Architect, VMWare, USA.

Experts across 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 up-gradation.

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 & 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.