India to roll out standards on 5G network soon

India has started working 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 D. P. De, Sr DDG, Telecommunication Engineering Centre (TEC) at the 5G India 2017 Conference here.

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 Adrian Scrase, Chief Technical Officer, ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute and Head of 3GPP MCC (Mobile Competence Core).

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 Shyam P Mardikar, CTO (Mobile Networks), Bharti Airtel.

“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 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 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 Sarda.

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 roll out 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 Mathews.

“VMware network function virtualization 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 abovementioned industry leaders, the inaugural session was presented by Jalaj Choudhri, EVP (Networks), Reliance Communications; Chandan Kumar, Director – Marketing & Public Affairs, Huawei; Dharma Rajan, Lead NFV Solutions Architect, VMWare, USA.

The inaugural session was followed by two technical sessions which deliberated on a host of issues related to 5G ecosystem, including network upgradation, product support and development, policy & regulation, IoT, security challenges and other issues.