On the one hand, the service providers have raised concerns regarding interoperability and increase in network deployment cost if they go for 5Gi standards. On the other hand, the technology developers say that deployment requires only minor software changes.

The year 2020 was a momentous one for the Indian telecom industry, with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) approving the country’s homegrown standards, called 5Gi for the first time.

Even so, there seems to be a tug of war between the Indian telcos and the government regarding the adoption of these standards. On the one hand, the service providers have raised concerns regarding interoperability and increase in network deployment cost if they go for 5Gi standards. On the other hand, the technology developers say that deployment requires only minor software changes.

The story so far

5Gi standards were developed by the Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) under the aegis of Telecommunications Standards Development Society of India (TSDSI). Its feature, Low Mobility Large Cell (LMLC), helps enhance the signal transmission range of a base station which can help the service providers expand coverage several times over when compared with the current distance covered. This innovation is designed to enable the telcos to cost-effectively expand 5G coverage in rural and remote areas.

There is a massive gap between the urban and rural teledensity. While urban teledensity (combined) is 141.0%, the rural teledensity is just 60.2% at the end of March 2021, as per TRAI figures. The indigenous 5Gi standard can potentially help the telcos provide high-speed and low-latency 5G coverage in the rural and difficult to reach areas.

In spite of being the second-largest telecom market, India has not made any significant contribution to the development of communication standards over the years. Because standards define how technologies work and their interoperability around the world, it is a sign of technology prowess for any country to contribute to the development of standards.

Technical standards are created through collaboration between industry bodies, experts and companies. This ensures that the standards are uniform, which improves the efficiency of network rollouts and ensures that they work no matter where you are in the world. While US and European countries are dominant in setting the standards, China has also been playing a crucial role in the last few years in influencing the new technology standards.

The next challenge

However, getting approval from ITU is just the first step. 3GPP approval is crucial to the widespread adoption of these standards. 3GPP is a standards body that develops protocols for mobile telecommunications, has already completed work on Release 15, which defines base standards for 5G network deployment.

“The recent completion of Release 16 enables the evolution of use cases through 5G networks and associated standardization. 3GPP fulfils and meets the deployment requirements of all scenarios, from dense urban places like Delhi and Mumbai to vast parts of rural India,” explains Nokia spokesperson.

It is not yet clear if 5Gi will be included in Release 17 which is now likely to come out in 2022.

Developing standards is just the first crucial aspect, more important is to get the service providers to adopt these standards. It is here that the Indian standards are facing massive pushback from the telcos.

Recently, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has directed the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) to assess the acceptability of the Indian standards by the telcos. The Indian telcos, including Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, though have raised concerns around the interoperability and increase in cost if they adopt the homegrown standards. Jio is the only private telco that is open to the idea of adopting 5Gi.

Bharti Airtel refused to respond to the questionnaire about the standards, saying that their comments on this are in the public domain and they don’t have anything new to add. Vodafone Idea, Jio and COAI didn’t respond till the time of writing this article.

There seems to be resistance to developing solution in line with 5Gi among the vendors as well. “India cannot afford to become an island in the 5G journey, which can limit the adoption of 5G and increase the end-user cost of ownership,” says Nokia spokesperson.

It is easy to see why vendors are somewhat reluctant to develop solutions as per 5Gi standards. Unless wider acceptability is assured, it doesn’t justify the R&D effort to develop the products.

“It is best to align with the global standards because the telcos will be able to bring down their network rollout cost by deploying equipment from OEMs which are harmonised to global standards and thus have scale benefits. Also, operators and vendors in India have shown an intent to develop indigenous solutions for 5G and take them outside of India, once proven at scale in India,” explains Ashwinder Sethi, Principal at Analysys Mason.

“The R&D cost of developing such solutions can only be recuperated if the operators/vendors can tap the global markets. Considering both the telco and equipment vendor perspective, there is really no need for India to come up with indigenous standards,” adds Sethi.

In this context, it is unlikely the telcos will pay heed to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) recommendation to use 5Gi technology to conduct 5G trials. Unless and until the Indian telcos and gear makers commit to using these standards, the gain made by India would just remain a footnote.

Even so, the developers say that 5Gi deployment requires only minor tweaks in software to use the homegrown standards, while the telcos allege that it would lead to interoperability issues and will lead to an increase in network deployment expense.

“Both 5Gi and 5G are global standards approved by ITU and are completely interoperable. We have already shown that 5G and 5Gi RAN and 5G and 5Gi handsets can be deployed in the same network and inter-operated seamlessly. Since the additional cost of implementing 5Gi features in 5G equipment is negligible, the cost of deployment will not change at all,” says Prof Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director of IIT-Madras and Chairman of TSDSI.

The road ahead?

Even if the road ahead looks bumpy, there is no denying that 5Gi is the first crucial step taken by India to develop communications standards.

“5Gi will be kept updated and interoperable with 5G as it evolves. Further enhancements will also be added where required. At present, we have not yet seen widespread announcements of 5Gi products by vendors even though supporting the enhancements in 5Gi require only modest software changes in the RAN and simple tweaks in the phone. We expect such announcements to be made in the coming months since India has expressed keenness to deploy 5Gi particularly for enhanced rural coverage,” says Prof Ramamurthi.

“India follows an established policy with regard to technology choice by the telcos as part of its licensing regime and this will continue. However, the government will encourage 5Gi as it has done for the trials and provide incentives for the deployment of 5Gi, particularly in rural areas,” says Prof Ramamurthi.

In retrospect, it was never going to be easy for India to break into the dominance of the US and Europe in setting global communications standards. However, this is just the first step and it is sure to act as a tailwind for India’s greater contribution in developing future standards.

https://cio.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/corporate-news/in-depth-what-lies-ahead-for-indias-5gi/83942637