DoT drops plan on adoption of 5Gi following strong opposition from telecom companies

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is discarding its plan to push for the adoption of the local 5G standard — called the 5Gi — following strong opposition from telecom companies. The Telecommunications Standards Development Society India (TSDSI), the Telecommunication Engineering Center (TEC) under the DoT will not proceed ahead with the adoption of 5Gi as a national standard for the fifth-generation telecom technology. The TSDSI in a statement also informed that it will continue to follow global 5G standards as local standards.

“TSDSI shall continue to transpose the 3GPP specifications and make them available to TEC for adoption as the India national standard in a timely manner. The proposal is expected to be finally approved, earliest in the next TSG RAN plenary (#95e) to be held in March 2022 upon the receipt of a committed roadmap of pursuing merged 3GPP 5G specifications in India with no further 5Gi updates in ITU-R,” TSDSI said in its statement.

The 5G Radio Interface Technology (RIT) called 5Gi is an initiative of the TSDSI together with academia. The merger initiative has been spearheaded by the US-based chipmaker Qualcomm but attracted intense pushback from the industry.

Indian telcos, gear, and chipset vendors along with handset companies and trade bodies have been opposing the incorporation of 5Gi as a national standard citing compatibility issues with 3GPP’s global 5G standard, which has already been adopted globally for commercial live networks. Telcos had urged the DoT and the TEC to merge 5Gi with 3GPP’s global 5G standard to achieve scale and bring down costs.