India Mobile Congress 2018: Telecom Equipment Vendors to Invest over Rs 4,000 crore in India; Samsung in Spotlight

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IEEE President Jim Jefferies speaking at India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2018

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Telecom Equipment Vendors Investment in India:

Telecom equipment makers including Cisco, Samsung, Ericsson, Nokia, Intel and Sterlite Tech (from India) will be investing more than Rs 4,000 [1] crore in India, announced Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha Saturday at the third day of the India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2018.  That investment commitment is in line with India Prime Minister Narendra Modi‘s goal to achieve a capital gain of $100 billion (about Rs 7 lakh crore) by 2022.   The amount invested will increase further, said Sinha, adding that the investment commitment shown by the equipment manufacturers is a part of government’s ambitious policy target to achieve Rs 7 lakh crore worth of investment by 2022.   Sinha said discussions and announcements at IMC show that India is ready for the emerging 5G services. The 5G technology (based on the forthcoming IMT 2020 standard) would facilitate massive machine-to-machine (M2M) communication and has many other applications.

Note 1.   4000 crores (= 400000 lakhs) is equal to 40000 million (40 billion).  40,000,000,000 INR is equal to 544,400,000 USD @ 73.48 Indian rupees to 1 US dollar.

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These are the first set of investments flowing in after the announcement of National Digital Communications Policy. In August this year, the India Cabinet has approved the National Digital Communications Policy 2018 that aims to attract $100 billion of investment and creation of 4 million jobs in next four years, in addition to an aggressive focus on next-generation of technologies. However, the investments will be made over a period of next one-two years, according Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan.

Among all these telecom equipment makers, Sterlite Tech is the only homegrown (Indian) company that locally produces end-to-end optic fiber gear, a critical digital infrastructure required to increase 4G-LTE footprint and enabler of upcoming “5G” technology roll-outs.

Meanwhile, Korea’s Samsung, Sweden’s Ericsson, Finland’s Nokia and the US-based Cisco have already partnered with India service operators and the telecom department to conduct field trials and demonstrate India-specific 5G use cases.

Industry experts discussed challenges in the digital communications during the three-day India Mobile Congress 2018 event, which saw participation from 20 countries and 300 companies, Sinha said.  Sinha added that discussions and announcements at the event show India is ready for the emerging 5G services. The 5G technology could facilitate massive machine-to-machine communications and has multiple usages.

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The India Mobile Congress 2018 was organized jointly by the India DoT and industry group Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) which represents telcos such as Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea as well as gear makers such as Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, Cisco and Samsung.

Sundararajan said IMC has generated more enthusiasm around 5G and the government has already committed to be at par with the world in launching this next generation services.  “We have already demonstrated government intent that India does not miss the 5G bus. We have already started to take initial set of action to make an enabling environment. We expect actual allocations of spectrum (for 5G services) to begin in the second half of next year,” Sundararajan added.

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Samsung in IMC 2018 Spotlight:

At IMC 2018, Samsung announced its plan for India’s first large-scale 5G trial, scheduled to take place in the first quarter of 2019 in collaboration with the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).

In his keynote speech at the event, Youngky Kim, President and Head of Networks Business at Samsung Electronics, said, “Samsung will pave the way for 5G to unlock the full potential of India together with industry leaders.  We are witnessing a rise in adoption of new technologies, inspired by ‘Digital India’ and spurred by the transition to 4G.’

“Our partnership with Reliance Jio has empowered millions, making their everyday lives better. Our roadmap for 5G showcases our strong commitment to India. We will continue to be a partner in Government of India’s Digital India mission,” said HC Hong, President and CEO, Samsung Electronics SouthWest Asia. Leading Disruptive Changes Using 4G in Digital India Since 2012, Samsung has been a key partner of the Indian telecommunications industry. During President Kim’s keynote speech at the IMC, he said that Samsung has successfully built the world’s largest greenfield and the most advanced 4G LTE networks nationwide by partnering with Reliance Jio.

At IMC 2018, Samsung showcased how its 5G solutions can enable a variety of 5G-powered business models and scenarios, including: 5G home broadband services, Smart Cities and Smart Agriculture.

Samsung’s 5G Skyship (see photo below), which was developed in partnership with Korea Telecom, was flying over the exhibition center to demonstrate first response use cases. Samsung says it has been a pioneer in developing 5G solutions using its technology and experience. With its successful development of the first commercial ASIC-based 5G modems and mmWave RFICs, the company has been manufacturing compact-sized 5G radio and router devices and CPEs.

Photo provided by KT shows an unmanned airship using “high-end 5G” technology at the India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2018 in New Delhi 

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Samsung says its years of commitment to R&D investments since 2000 have come to fruition, as the company has been selected by the world’s leading operators such Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and SK Telecom for both 4G and 5G solutions and services. At the root of this achievement are Samsung’s end-to-end solutions spanning network equipment, devices, chip sets and the world’s-first regulatory approval of 5G equipment by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).  Samsung will continue its legacy of 4G LTE to enable digital transformation and provide a seamless path to 5G.

 

5 thoughts on “India Mobile Congress 2018: Telecom Equipment Vendors to Invest over Rs 4,000 crore in India; Samsung in Spotlight”

  1. India plans instant approvals for 5G trials

    The Indian government has announced plans to put processes in place allowing it to grant immediate approval for 5G field trials and R&D activities, in a bid to ensure India does not lag behind in 5G.

    The special regime is being put in place to allow the Department of Telecom to expedite its planned 5G field trials, the Economic Times reported.

    The department has approached vendors including Cisco, Samsung, Ericsson and Nokia to conduct 5G use case trials, while Huawei has also expressed an interest in participating.

    Incumbent operators including Vodafone Idea, Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio Infocomm and state-owned operator BSNL have also been invited to participate.

    The government plans to allocate spectrum for 5G in the second half of 2019. The telecoms ministry has received recommendations from regulator Trai about the 3500-MHz frequency band, and is also looking at 2.4-GHz to 2.8-GHz spectrum, the report states.

    Meanwhile the government plans to establish the National Fibre Authority (NFA) to help meet the fiber needs for 5G, and is working with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) to establish technology standards and develop use cases for the Indian market.

    Through the initiatives, the government hopes to have a functional 5G infrastructure in place by 2023.

    https://www.telecomasia.net/content/india-plans-instant-approvals-5g-trials

  2. India’s 5G field trials to start early next year and continue for 2-3 quarters or more

    ET, Radhey Shyam Sarda, Wireless CTO, Huawei India discussed at length about Indian industry’s efforts to drive 5G in the country.

    What are the new technologies that Indian telcos are aggressively pushing for?

    Now telcos are focusing on making the network ready for future and when we look at the future, ofcourse 5G is one key milestone that we see. Telcos are introducing technologies like NFV and NB-IoT to introduce IoT use cases to start with. They are also working on massive MIMO which is a 5G technology and it has been applied in 4G network as well to address the exponential growth of data traffic.

    Another key technology that we are applying is called CloudAIR. If we look at India market, we have 2G, 3G and we also have 4G while 4G is still getting densified.

    Now that we are talking about 5G, the key question is that, when we have to keep 2G, 3G for some more time, we cannot sunset them immediately. How do we introduce 4G given that the spectrum is limited? The traditional way of doing this is called refarming.

    So if I have to refarm some 2G spectrum and use it for 4G, I will have to shut down 2G which is not possible in India market scenario because there is still very huge number of 2G subscribers and 3G subscribers. Hence we are introducing CloudAIR which enables us to dynamically share spectrum between technologies and that is how we are able to introduce 4G in the same spectrum in which we are running 2G.

    Given that there are times in the day when 2G traffic is high for voice and then there are other times when data traffic is high, in such scenario this technology is able to maximize the utilization of spectrum and enables us to do more and more 4G in the limited spectrum with 2G or 3G service continuity.

    We have now taken this family to the standards and it is now getting into 3GPP standard for LTE and 5G spectrum sharing and this will also be one of the key technologies going forward while we add towards 5G India market and globally.

    Where does India stand today on the 5G trials front?

    In the beginning of this year we conducted the first 5G demo with one of the leading operators in January. In IMC also we demonstrated 3 use cases on live 5G network. The use cases could be experienced in Huawei booth as well as at booths of Airtel and Reliance Jio. In Airtel booth we demonstrated AR-based holographic communication and in Jio booth we demonstrated telemedicine based remote diagnosis. All use cases that we are introducing demonstrate key technologies like low latency, AR/VR. These technologies will be the key building blocks of many more 5G use cases.

    https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/5g-field-trials-to-start-early-next-year-and-continue-for-2-3-quarters-or-more-huawei-indias-wireless-cto/66444273

  3. Sterlite forays into access network solutions, teams up with Jio for last mile fibre connectivity

    Sterlite Tech, a Vedanta Resources company has entered into telecom network market to provide integrated services to telcos, and is currently doing a Proof of Concept (PoC) for its newly-unveiled fibre to the last mile solution with Reliance Jio.

    “We are looking beyond fibre. We now design end-to-end network solutions for fibre-to-the-home, fibre-to-the-enterprise, and fibre-to-the-small cells,” Anand Agarwal, group chief executive of Sterlite Tech told ETTelecom, adding that the new portfolio involves end equipment and software as well as a deployment solution.

    The Pune-based company, according to the top executive, is currently doing a Proof of Concept (PoC) for its newly-unveiled fibre-to-the-last mile or FTTx as a service platform with the India’s third-largest telco.

    https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/sterlite-forays-into-access-network-solutions-teams-up-with-jio-for-last-mile-connectivity/66500814

  4. India is a challenging market, we’ll continue to invest: Ericsson’s Nunzio Mirtillo

    Sweden’s Ericsson, the world’s biggest telecom gear maker, will continue to invest strongly in India, which it considers a challenging — and big — market. Nunzio Mirtillo, head of India, SE Asia and Oceania markets at Ericsson, told ET’s Danish Khan the government needs to price 5G airwaves fairly to drive Digital India. Edited excerpts:How do you see the wireless business growing in India?India continues to be amongst the top three countries globally. We have grown and will continue to grow in coming quarters. India is an extremely challenging but also a big market, where Ericsson will continue to invest.Which areas are major growth drivers for Ericsson?There is a huge increase in consumer demand. As many as 800 million people are waiting to be a part of the connected ecosystem. Out of the 400 million that today are connected, a big portion of that number would be ready to pay for quality services, which is an untouched revenue potential in the market.

    Also, India will soon adopt 5G as it will allow you to get the production cost of gigabit at a lower cost. Obviously, the ecosystem has to do its job.Telcos have been asserting that 5G spectrum prices should be affordable. Your views?The government must make the spectrum available at a fair price. It might get little bit less benefit directly from the spectrum allocation as compared to the indirect benefit. This will be a great move in pushing for Digital India.Ericsson also got a letter from DoT for 5G trials. What’s the update?When it comes to real field trials, they need to be started by the service providers first, with the regulators. We will be a part of that. We have pacts with Airtel and BSNL.Vendors in India are saying that these 5G field trials require a lot of investments. Are you open to make these investments?It will be more of a collaboration as everyone has to do their bit. It will be a shared investment between the different suppliers, operators and the government.How is the managed services business performing in India?It is obviously very challenging because everything is moving so fast right now. When the uptake of traffic is so fast, it means the operators need to take actions in real time. So, it’s becoming a complicated job. That’s why we are also investing as much as we can in automation and AI.Do you plan to expand the Pune facility?When we will get volumes for 5G, we will start using our factory. So currently we use that factory for VoLTE technology since the volumes are high for it. Every time there is a need to scale up, we will adopt.

    https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/telecom/telecom-news/india-is-a-challenging-market-well-continue-to-invest/articleshow/66729894.cms

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