The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) finally gave permissions to Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) for conducting trials for use and applications
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5G telecom arriving in India - An analysis
- The story: The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) finally gave permissions to Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) for conducting trials for use and applications of 5G technology. The TSPs were told to conduct 5G trials in rural & semi urban areas as well. The 5G technology is expected to deliver a greater spectrum efficiency and better download speeds, ushering in a new era of different applications.
- Points to note: The 5G rollout is witnessing the coming together of giants.
- Bharti Airtel has joined forces with TATA Group to develop a 5G network, Reliance Jio has also tied up with Google Cloud for its 5G solutions.
- Jio began 5G trials in Mumbai using its indigenously developed equipment. The 5G network of Airtel was able to deliver a throughput of over 1 Gbps speed.
- 5G is based on OFDM (Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing), a method of modulating a digital signal across several different channels to reduce interference. 5G uses 5G NR air interface alongside OFDM principles. 5G also uses wider bandwidth technologies such as sub-6 GHz and mmWave. Like 4G LTE, 5G OFDM operates based on the same mobile networking principles. However, the new 5G NR air interface can further enhance OFDM to deliver a much higher degree of flexibility and scalability.
- Auctions by TRAI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) will hold auctions for the 5G spectrum in India, something now delayed by a long margin. As for 5G technology rollout, the Standing Committee on Information Technology was informed that 5G will roll out in India to some extent for specific uses, by the end of the calendar year 2021 or beginning of 2022. But 4G internet service will continue in India for at least another 5-6 years.
- What 5G is: This technology will deliver improved user experience via higher data download rates (10 times that of 4G), up to three times greater spectrum efficiency, and ultra-low latency. Applications such as tele-medicine, tele-education, augmented/virtual reality, drone-based agricultural monitoring, etc. will be tested now. The data generated during the trials will be stored in India.
- Fifth Generation (5G) Technology: Starting with 1G, telecom moved through its evolution of 2G, 3G, and 4G. Now 5G is the fifth generation cellular technology that will increase the downloading and uploading speeds over the mobile network. In the high-band spectrum of 5G, internet speeds have been tested to be as high as 20 Gbps (gigabits per second) as compared to the maximum internet data speed in 4G recorded at 1 Gbps. The 5G will also reduce the latency i.e. the time taken by a network to respond.
- Machine-to-Machine Interaction - 5G will be the first technology to facilitate machine-to-machine communication, the foundation of Internet of Things (IoT). IoT is where billions of machines talk to each other, and that requires huge data transfer abilities.
- Combined with IoT, cloud, big data, AI, and edge computing, 5G could be a critical enabler of the fourth industrial revolution.
- Boost: This change of technology platform may create an overall economic impact of USD 1 trillion in India by 2035, as per various reports. It will increase the connectivity between machines and various sectors which will in turn increase efficiency. Production will rise which would lead to huge revenue collections.
- Collaborative deployment: 5G will lead to the business verticals and technical verticals coming together for network deployment. So far, telecom firms would discuss internally and deploy networks but now, businesses, technology companies and cyber experts are coming together for deploying networks. This is because it's not just higher speeds that matter but actual use-cases that do.
- Various problems: Countries in the Asia-Pacific region, including India, Bangladesh and Indonesia are late adopters of 5G technology. The 5G mobile service revenues may not be significant over the next 12-18 months. A low likelihood of government subsidies is expected, given the history of high reserve prices set by the governments for spectrum auctions amid ongoing fiscal deficits. Then there is the digital divide among the rural and urban areas, which will likely increase. 5G will be a niche service unlike 3G and 4G which were pervasive services. 5G will get deeply embedded only over a comparatively longer period of time. Indian consumers are still grappling with basic network issues like call drops and interrupted data services. 5G will require a fundamental change to the core architecture of the communication system. The major flaw of data transfer using 5G is that it can't carry data over longer distances. Hence, even 5G technology needs to be augmented to enable infrastructure.
- Summary: 5G can be deployed at different band spectrums and at the low band spectrum, the range being longer which will helpf the rural areas. The government has complete control over the inputs, including the band spectrum. By managing the design of the spectrums, the government can control the price to be paid by the users. The government has had two failed auctions. The latter failed to attract any bids in the 5G spectrum. But the current proposals for the reserve price clearly suggest the need to change the prices in order to conduct a successful auction. And as 5G starts taking shape in India, it is important to strengthen the domestic telecommunication manufacturing market so that manufacturers will be able to benefit too.
- Knowledge centre: There have been five generations of telecom technology.
- First generation - 1G - 1980s: 1G delivered analog voice
- Second generation - 2G - Early 1990s: 2G introduced digital voice (e.g. CDMA- Code Division Multiple Access)
- Third generation - 3G - Early 2000s: 3G brought mobile data (e.g. CDMA2000)
- Fourth generation - 4G LTE - 2010s: 4G LTE ushered in the era of mobile broadband
- 1G, 2G, 3G, and 4G all led to 5G, which is designed to provide more connectivity than was ever available before. 5G is a unified, more capable air interface. It has been designed with an extended capacity to enable next-generation user experiences, empower new deployment models and deliver new services.
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