Announcing the sixth edition of the India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2022, scheduled for September 29-October 1 in New Delhi, he said that the industry has emerged to become a sunrise industry in India and a benchmark for the world.
"We are committed to make sure that India's regulatory systems are transformed to become the world's best so that industries across the globe are comfortable to invest and plan for the next 10 years," said the minister.
Minister of State for Communications Devusinh Chauhan said that the government has reached new heights in introducing 5G technology with an auction of Rs 1.5 lakh crore for 5G spectrum.
"It is a true testimony of our efforts in making India a digitalised nation," he emphasised.
"We aim to facilitate last-mile connectivity to India's hinterlands and I believe the India Mobile Congress (IMC) will become a catalyst in bringing this change," Chauhan told the gathering.
The sixth edition of IMC will include numerous startups programmes in digital space with assistance from industry stalwarts.
Owing to rising business opportunities with 5G implementation, IMC will facilitate programmes focusing on emerging technologies such 5G and its use in IoT, robotics, gaming, drones, and metaverse.
"As the backbone for digital communications, the telecommunications sector is experiencing a technological revolution, with ever-evolving new technologies, products and 5G to become a leading driver of growth in sectors like agriculture, education, healthcare, robots, amongst others," Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) Director General, Lt Gen Dr S.P. Kochhar (retd), said.
"This will open the door to infinite possibilities for the nation's future growth," he added.
The annual event is expected to witness 70,000 attendees, 7,000 CXO-level delegates, 300 speakers, and 350 exhibitors in more than 60 sessions.
Some of the highlights of the IMC this year would be 'QUAD Countries Telecom Ministerial Summit' and 5G use cases.
The number of smartphone subscriptions is expected to be 810 million at the end of 2021 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 7 per cent, reaching over 1.2 billion by 2027 in the country, according to the mobility report by Swedish telecommunication giant Ericsson.
The average traffic per smartphone in the India region is the second-highest globally and is projected to grow to around 50GB per month in 2027.
"Total mobile data traffic in India has grown from 9.4 EB (exabyte) per month in 2020 to 12 EB per month in 2021 and is projected to increase by more than 4 times to reach 49EB per month in 2027," the report projected.
According to Nitin Bansal, Head of Ericsson India and Head of Network Solutions for South east Asia, Oceania and India, Ericsson, 5G will serve as a socio-economic multiplier for the country.
"We are preparing the communication service providers for a seamless introduction of 5G in the country based on our global deployment experience , our innovative and competitive 5G portfolio as well as the 5G trials we are doing with Indian operators to showcase the possibilities with 5G," Bansal said in a statement.
In the India region, 4G is expected to remain the dominant technology in 2027, however the 4G subscriptions are forecast to drop from 790 million in 2021 to 710 million in 2027, showing an annual average decline of 2 per cent.
The reliance on mobile networks to stay connected and work from home has contributed to the average traffic per smartphone increasing to 18.4GB per month in 2021, up from 16.1GB per month in 2020.
The average traffic per smartphone in the India region is the second-highest globally and is projected to grow to around 50GB per month in 2027, the report mentioned.
Ericsson recently carried out 5G trials with Airtel and Vi, where it demonstrated enhanced mobile broadband and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) use cases with 5G.
Globally, there has been almost 300-fold increase in mobile data traffic since 2011, the report noted.
Further, both domestic and global companies are set to benefit from the non-participation of Chinese majors Huawei and ZTE in the 5G trials.
Global equipment majors such as Ericsson are not the only ones in the game. Even domestic players have risen up to the occasion and are now actively pursuing tie ups along with growing their technical prowess.
Tech Mahindra, Sterlite Technologies Ltd and state-run ITI Ltd are among the Indian companies which have come up with 5G expertise.
The latest announcement of Tata Sons' subsidiary Panatone Finvest acquiring controlling stake in telecom equipment maker Tejas Networks would toughen the competition.
Panatone Finvest will buy a 43.3 per cent stake in Tejas Networks for Rs 1,850 crore and along with other Tata Group companies, Panatone would make a public announcement to acquire up to another 26 per cent stake in Tejas.
In a regulatory filing, Tejas said that it sees a very large opportunity in the telecom sector both in India and global markets with the new cycle of investments in 5G and fiber-based broadband rollouts.
In June, telecom giant Reliance's Jio partnered with US chipset maker Qualcomm to manufacture critical equipment for the 5G ecosystem in India.
Jio has also indigenously developed 5G Radio integrated with Jio's 5G core network and is in its development of in-house Massive MIMO and indoor 5G small cells is in advanced stages.
Tech Mahindra is also understood to be going with robust plans in terms of 5G technology.
The company recently reported strong earnings for the first quarter of FY22 and analysts are of the view that with the government's plan to stick to India-made 5G rollout, the company is expected the gain a significant portion of that "5G tech" pie.
As several partnerships in the telecom space have been announced, last month Bharti Airtel and Tata Consultancy Services announced partnership for the implementation of 5G solutions, starting pilot from January 2022.
TCS will implement the 5G solutions it has developed for Airtel. Tata Group has developed 5G solutions using Open-Radio Access Network (O-RAN), a part of telecommunication architecture.
Earlier this year, Bharti Airtel announced that it has become the first telecom service provider in the country to successfully demonstrate and orchestrate live 5G service. The demonstration took place in Hyderabad.
Last year, Bharti Airtel extended its multi-year contract with Ericsson for deploying 5G-ready radio network, strengthening their long-standing partnership.
Vodafone Idea in June announced to collaborate with Cisco to improve its existing 4G network and, in the future, 5G use cases for offering better quality experience for its customers.
The telco said that it would work with Cisco to design and build a cost-efficient network architecture to drive greater speed to market as it taps opportunities in 4G, 5G, Cloud, and IoT.
Finnish mobile and equipment maker Nokia may to be seen in India's much awaited 5G scenario.
Sector experts are of the view that the Rs 12,195 crore production linked incentive scheme would also be a major boost for the sector and more players may pitch in to manufacture equipment and network devices in India.
As per the government, the scheme envisages to create global champions out of India who have the potential to grow in size and scale, using cutting edge technology and thereby, penetrate the global value chains. Telecom products play an important role in the larger vision of "Digital India".
This whole target of domestic manufacturing gained traction last year amid the border standoff with China.
Amid the standoff and concerns over security, the government decided to keep Chinese players, some of which are giants in this very segment, out of the 5G trials in India.
The much-anticipated 5G trials have begun and the Department of Telecommunications granted permission to Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, Vodafone Idea Ltd on May 27, 2021 and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited on June 23, 2021 for conducting 5G Technology trials with a validity period of six months.
As India takes strides in terms of manufacturing and technology, it seems it may turn self-sufficient and even a global leader in terms of 5G technology with several major global companies coming in and home-grown players too joining the bus.
According to CMR's "4Ps of Mobile Handset Industry Report 2019" that focuses on the hyper-competitive mobile industry ecosystem in India, 5G-enabled smartphone shipments are expected to grow by around 250 per cent by 2025 on the back of a slow and gradual uptake.
"Over the coming months, many smartphone brands would be looking to showing off their prototype, or 5G-ready devices. The initial 5G-enabled devices would be at a high price point, and in the uber-premium segment. Smartphone brands, including OPPO and others, are likely to be the technology leaders in the 5G era," Prabhu Ram, Head of Industry Intelligence Group (IIG), CMR, said in a statement.
It is pertinent to note that South Korean tech major Samsung launched its 5G-enabled flagship smartphone - Galaxy S10 5G - on Thursday and hours later, Chinese premium smartphone maker OnePlus also announced launching its 5G-enabled phones in the second quarter of 2019.
"At CMR, we anticipate 5G to attain scale from 2022 onwards. As on date, there are various critical themes at play, including the impending 5G spectrum allocation later this year as well as the necessary technical and infrastructure upgradation required for 5G," added Ram.
"The DoT has received good inputs on 5G in the new telecom policy or NTP 2018 which is yet to be unveiled. The draft of the NTP 2018 is in final stages and will be put in public soon," Sundararajan, chairperson, Telecom Commission and Secretary, DoT, said while inaugurating an Assocham Summit on Connected Devices-Connected World conference.
Sundararajan said the networks were not only accelerating the roll-out of the 4G but were getting ready for 5G.
"I expect that by the end of the next financial year, we will have pan India 4G coverage barring a few pockets. The right regulatory framework is the key to create an enabling environment for connected device," she said.
On the issue of call drop, the secretary said the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has brought a new regulatory regime under which there are stringent norms for call drops that need to be followed by the telecom companies.
Regarding in-flight connectivity, Sundararajan said: "We are moving towards getting approvals for in-flight connectivity but cannot give any time frame for the final approval, however, the discussions are on right track."
On the first day of the "India Mobile Congress 2017" here, Huawei highlighted its efforts in ensuring that the commercial roll-out of the 5G network in the country happens along with the developed global economies of the world.
The company, which began investing in 5G research in 2009, is aiming to invest $600 million in the technology by 2018.
"The 5G era is approaching, and we are confident that 5G deployment in India will happen in line with global timeline," said Jay Chen, CEO, Huawei India.
"Huawei continues to promote joint innovation with operators in the 5G field around the world and in India, and is joining hands with upstream and downstream industry partners to promote the sustainable development of the 5G industry," Chen added.
Huawei, together with Bharti Airtel, recently launched the country's first massive multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) antenna technology implementation, which can potentially increase spectrum efficiency by six to ten times.
The move will significantly decrease networking costs, enhancing intensive coverage and user experience in India.
Last month, Huawei released its 5G-oriented mobile bearer solution 'X-Haul', which is now available in India. The solution will help operators in India build end-to-end 5G networks.
"India is getting future ready and has started serious work on identifying and formalising the standards for the rollout of 5G. The standards are likely to be ready by 2018," said D.P. De, Senior Deputy Director General of Telecommunication Engineering Centre (TEC), at the 5G India 2017 Conference here.
"5G will be an overarching umbrella of networks rather than a replacement technology and will usher in significant economic, political and environmental benefits," observed 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, the key drivers for 5G rollout and adoption will be a massively anticipated increase in data consumption, fast increasing digitalised life and services, growth of smart cities and the need to have an all encompassing network architecture which can utilise all available spectrum band rather than replace the existing networks, said an official statement.
"Connected devices, digitised 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, Chief Technical Officer (Mobile Networks), Bharti Airtel.
"We have moved from the voice phase to video consumption and the next phase will be virtuality which will demand humongous data availability and networks have to evolve to keep pace. This will be a real challenge."
Rajan S. Mathews, Director General, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), said: "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 Mathews.
The statement said experts across the board agreed that the telecommunication services will migrate to 5G architecture sooner or later, and time has come to start serious preparation for standardisation and network upgradation.
"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," the statement added.
TEC is the nodal agency of the Department of Telecommunications in the Ministry of Communications, and is responsible for drawing up of standards, generic requirements, interface requirements, service requirements and specifications for telecom products, services and networks.
Speaking at the curtain raiser event of the Indian Mobile Congress (IMC) 2019, he stressed that 5G, along with Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), must lead to transformation.
"My vision and ambition is not just specific to roll out of 5G services but also creation of Indian IP and patents in 5G technology," he said
Prasad invited industry leaders, brands, innovators, academia and the policy makers to IMC 2019 which will be held here October 14-16. "We are hopeful that with the concerted efforts, from all corners, celebrating the true spirit of digital India, this event will be a grand success," he added.
The event, jointly organized by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the Cellular Operators Association of India, will have over 40 participating countries, more than 300 exhibitors and over 250 speakers this year.
With 5G commercial networks being switched on, the first use cases are enhanced mobile broadband, which will bring better experiences for smartphone users, and fixed wireless access, providing fiber speeds without fiber to homes.
Being able to download a full-length HD movie in seconds and share your wow-moments with friends -- that's just the beginning.
Commercial 5G networks are starting to go live across the world.
"The true value of 5G is the opportunity it presents for people, business and the world at large: industries, regions, towns and cities that are more connected, smarter and more sustainable," says Ericsson which is leading 5G research and deployment globally.
Although we have some idea how 5G smartphone will look like, the technology as a whole is not yet fully understood by billions of people who are set to reap the benefits when it explodes - at home, office or on the go.
In 2020, worldwide 5G wireless network infrastructure revenue will reach $4.2 billion, an 89 per cent increase from 2019 revenue of $2.2 billion, according to Gartner.
Additionally, investments in 5G NR (New Radio) network infrastructure will account for 6 per cent of the total wireless infrastructure revenue of communications service providers (CSPs) in 2019, and that this figure will reach 12 per cent in 2020.
5G New Radio (NR) is the global standard for a unified, more capable 5G wireless air interface.
"It will deliver significantly faster and more responsive mobile broadband experiences, and extend mobile technology to connect and redefine a multitude of new industries," say Qualcomm, another 5G technology leader.
5G Services have already begun in the US, South Korea and some European countries, including Switzerland, Finland and the UK. CSPs in Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Spain, Sweden, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have announced plans to accelerate 5G network building through 2020.
Although consumers represent the main segment driving 5G development, CSPs will increasingly aim 5G services at enterprises.
According to Borje Ekholm, President and CEO of Ericsson, the company will switch on 5G globally in 2019, backed by a strong, secure and available portfolio.
"Consumers and enterprises are waiting for 5G," Ekholm said, adding that the US and Asia are leading in 5G development.
5G will improve your network connection dramatically.
"You won't have to deal with disruptions when sharing videos from crowded arenas, nor will high-quality videos on your newsfeed cause frustration from all the buffering," says Ericsson.
More efficient capabilities and vastly increased capacity means you'll enjoy better performance than ever before - 100 times faster data rates, supporting instant access to services and applications; network latency significantly reduced to 1-10 ms (milliseconds) and network slicing facility, making it possible to dedicate a unique part of a 5G network for a service.
The introduction of 5G will make it possible for communications service providers (CSPs) to improve their business in various ways.
"Our economic study of enhanced mobile broadband shows that evolution to 5G will enable 10 times lower cost per gigabyte than current 4G networks," Ericsson notes.
Meanwhile, Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) can provide connectivity for households and businesses.
Enabling new use cases, new services new business models and new eco-system, service providers can benefit from up to $619 billion market opportunity globally in 2026.
For the world-at-large, 5G is enabling a new wave of innovation.
It has the potential for changing the world, further powering the trends in tech today: IoT (Internet of Things), AI (Artificial Intelligence), AR (Augmented Reality), autonomous vehicles and many more.
However, with billions of devices in action, a growing strain will be placed on requirements of wireless networks. Contemporary WiFi and cellular networks won't be enough to support the influx of IoT devices.
The ongoing 5G research, however, will soon address this too.
Despite tall claims made by the government, the 5G technology that is gaining momentum fast globally may take at least another 5-6 years to reach the masses in India - for the simple reason that even 5G spectrum allocation is yet to take place for full-fledged trials.
According to IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, spectrum auctions will be held in this calendar year and the trials for 5G services with radiowaves allotted by the ministry will commence in the next 100 day.
This does not sound very promising, if we look at how the things are currently moving.
The entire 5G ecosystem, which involves original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), infrastructure, spectrum and edge devices, is currently missing and in such a scenario, various 5G-enabled devices that are now set to see the light of day are redundant for the Indian consumers.
"We expect 5G to reach mainstream in India in 2023 and mass market starting 2025 or so," said Neil Shah, Research Director at Counterpoint Research.
"This will, however, be much earlier compared to 3G and 4G era which took at least seven to eight years in India since the first global commercialisation for each generation of tech curves," Shah told IANS.
Although India is targeting 2020 for 5G rollout, the country is yet to allocate 5G spectrum to operators even for 5G trial of use cases.
On individual level, 5G trials are slowly picking up with Ericsson, Nokia, Intel and Huawei aiming to invest towards 5G test beds in India.
"The dynamics are completely different now. We have a mature user base, perfect number of operators (three-four) and undergoing digital transformation at the right time beyond smartphones," Shah noted.
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), commercial 5G deployments have begun in many regions and while 2019 is very much an introductory year at best, 2020 looks to be the year where 5G begins to ramp up.
IDC expects 5G shipments to reach 8.9 per cent of smartphones shipped in 2020, accounting for 123.5 million devices shipped. This is expected to grow to 28.1 per cent of worldwide smartphone shipments by 2023.
"To be clear, we don't think 5G will be the savior in smartphones, but we do see it as a critical evolution in mobile technology," says Ryan Reith, Programme Vice President with IDC's Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers.
To fully exploit 5G, a new network topology is required, including new network elements such as edge computing, core network slicing and radio network densification.
Currently, South Korea, China, Japan, Australia and the US are leading with 5G large-scale mass deployment.
When it comes to pricing, it might look different, said Shah, adding that it will be driven by consumption patterns, mostly based on type of content and applications.
A recent Gartner report said that betting big on Internet of Things (IoT)-based communications and video analytics/streaming, nearly two-third of organisations plan to deploy the 5G technology by 2020 but are wary of the lack of readiness of communications service providers (CSPs) in making 5G networks ready by then.
"One major issue that 5G users face is the lack of readiness of communications service providers (CSPs). Their 5G networks are not available or capable enough for the needs of organisations," lamented Sylvain Fabre, Senior Research Director at Gartner.
India has much ground to cover in bringing 5G experience for over 600 million Internet users.
There will be a shift of computing to the edge, as India's businesses take advantage of the benefits of cloud and hyper-converged infrastructure to deal with increasing data gravity.
"With legacy three-tier architectures already struggling to cope with high volumes of data generated by today's enterprises, 5G will be the catalyst that drives edge computing and IoT," Balakrishnan Anantharaman, VP and MD-Sales, India and SAARC, Nutanix, told IANS.
"As increased speed and bandwidth reduce the gap between wifi and cellular devices -- edge computing will come into a realm of its own," he added.
The Indian IoT market is expected to touch $9 billion by 2020 across sectors such as telecom, health, vehicles and homes, among others.
It is emerging as the next big thing to become a $300 billion global industry by 2020 and India is all set to capture at least 20 per cent market share in the next five years, according to a Nasscom report.
Sai Pratyush, Additional Vice President, Product Marketing-ICS, Tata Teleservices Limited (TTSL) said that in the enterprise segment, they are witnessing significant growth in the adoption of new-age technologies such as IoT, AI and Cloud across industries.
"IoT especially is viewed as a key enabler driving digital transformation to unlock operational efficiencies. AI, coupled with ubiquitous connectivity, is enabling exponential value being generated by IoT. AI is seeing large scale adoption by enterprises owing to its power to aid automation, speed and better decision making," Pratyush elaborated.
The 'Edge' continues to evolve - with many working hard to define exactly what it is and where it exists.
As the advent of 5G makes AI-driven IoT a reality, edge computing environments are primed to become even more disruptive than cloud was.
"The advent of 5G is what AI-driven IoT has been waiting for. 2020 will see many players in the technology industry and business community invest in building edge-computing environments to support the reality of AI-driven IoT," said Atish Gude, NetApp's Chief Strategy Officer.
The "Edge" continues to evolve -- with many working hard to define exactly what it is and where it exists.
"Once limited to IoT, it's hard to find any systems, applications, services -- people and places -- that aren't connected. The edge is emerging in many places and it's going to expand with enterprise organisations leading the way, delivering the IT infrastructure to support it," stressed Alok Ohrie, President and Managing Director, Dell Technologies, India.
(IANS)
Nokia, which is the largest 4G vendor in Airtel network, will help lay the foundation for providing 5G connectivity in the future by deploying 300,000 radio units across several spectrum bands in those circles expected to be completed by 2022.
Reliable industry sources told IANS on Tuesday that the deal size is approximately $1 billion.
"We have been working with Nokia for more than a decade now and are delighted to use Nokia's SRAN products in further improving the capacity and coverage of our network as we prepare for the 5G era," Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO (India and South Asia) at Bharti Airtel, said in a statement.
Nokia's SRAN solution helps operators manage their 2G, 3G and 4G networks from one platform reducing network complexity, increasing cost efficiencies and future-proofing investment. The Finnish company will be the sole provider of SRAN in the nine circles in the country.
The Nokia supplied networks with their low latency and faster speeds will provide Airtel with the best possible platform for when 5G networks launch across the country.
"We have worked closely with Bharti Airtel for many years and are delighted to extend this long-standing partnership further. This project will enhance their current networks and deliver best-in-class connectivity to Airtel customers but also lay the foundations for 5G services in the future," explained Rajeev Suri, President and Chief Executive Officer at Nokia.
India currently is the second-largest telecom market in the world and is expected to reach 920 million unique mobile customers by 2025, which will also include 88 million 5G connections according to the GSMA.
The country is experiencing a massive increase in demand for data services with traffic increasing by 47 per cent in 2019 alone, according to Nokia's MBiT Index 2020.
Nokia's SRAN solution will help Airtel to address this growing demand by adding network capacity and ensuring a superior quality of experience to its customers.
The deal will also include Nokia's RAN equipment, including its AirScale Radio Access, AirScale BaseBand and NetAct OSS solution, which will help Airtel to monitor and manage its network effectively.
(IANS)