Telecom in India
Communications Minister Manoj Sinha: India will not miss 5G opportunity; New Spectrum Bands Coming?
The economic impact of 5G is estimated to be over one trillion dollars for India, which is aggressively positioning itself to be at the forefront of the new age technologies, Communications Minister Manoj Sinha said on Tuesday. Vowing that India will “not miss the 5G bus”, the minister outlined the country’s strides in telecom over the last five years, highlighting the spike in data consumption, broadband user base, and low tariffs, but added that ensuring safety and sovereignty of digital networks will be a priority for the government.
“While we are gearing up for the next wave of digital transformation, it is also important to ensure the safety, security and sovereignty of digital communications…It is important that we focus on security testing and establish appropriate security standards. We have recently started a state-of-the-art facility for preparation of security assurance standards, putting us at the forefront of technology,” Sinha said.
“The economic impact of 5G is expected to be over one trillion dollars for India, and the consequent multiplier effect is expected to be much more,” Sinha said.
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The facility will work on security requirements and also facilitate development of testing and certification ecosystem in the country, Sinha said while speaking at India Telecom 2019 expo organised by Telecom Equipment and Services Export Promotion Council (TEPC). Terming 5G as a “game changer”, the minister said that flagship government programs like Digital India and smart cities will ride on 5G. “The economic impact of 5G is expected to be over one trillion dollars for India, and the consequent multiplier effect is expected to be much more,” Sinha said.
The minister underscored the need for promoting investments to build underlying infrastructure that would make 5G a success, and added that a working group has been constituted to initiate implementation of recommendations of high level forum on 5G that had submitted its report in August 2018. Sinha also said that the government is in favour of policies and regulations that will facilitate development of 5G based technologies and services. “To ensure that we are able to launch 5G services in India along with the world, we have established 5G test beds through industry-academia partnerships, and we expect trials to be conducted over the next 12 months,” he said. India will position itself as a “globally synchronized participant” in manufacturing and development of 5G based technologies, products and applications, Sinha added.
In her address, Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan noted that connectivity needs of developing and developed markets were different. “Our challenges are different…we need telecom networks to deliver inclusion, basic services, to connect the unconnected, and serve the under-served,” she said, adding that India, with its technological prowess and manufacturing capabilities, is keen to partner other nations who are looking for affordable and robust digital communications solutions.
Rajiv Mehrotra, Chairman of VNL Ltd, highlighted the need to bridge the digital divide between rural and urban areas through connectivity solutions, and said that opportunities should be created for promoting indigenous telecom equipment manufacturing.
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Separately, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) could come out with the pricing and quantum of newer spectrum bands including millimeter wavelength (mmWave) range for 5G wireless technology rollout if the government seeks its view, a top official told ETT. “Government can ask for recommendations on new bands including millimeter wavelength (mmWave) band, and the telecom department can send us a reference,” Trai chairman Ram Sewak Sharma said, adding that the authority was in a view of opening up of all kinds of bands for newer technology.
The Narendra Modi-led government has already established a high-level 5G Forum under the Indo-American engineer and Stanford University professor emeritus AJ Paulraj which has already recommended newer bands to aid 5G rollout. It has suggested mmWave band for the 5G technology and said that 140 Mhz spectrum for backhaul usage should be allowed in addition to opening up of new bands for indoor access in line with practices worldwide.
References:
India’s 5G Conundrum: Mass Adoption not seen till 2023-2024!
by Hetal Gandhi (edited by Alan J Weissberger)
The writer is a Director at CRISIL Research
As the noise around India’s upcoming 5G spectrum auction rise, one must remember that ecosystem development is crucial to the success of next-generation technology. India is yet to complete the transition from 2G and 3G to 4G-LTE. But the march towards 5G is inexorable and necessitates giga-buck spending. Telcos have already invested more than Rs 3 lakh crore (India money) over the past three years, and a large portion of that money has been used to roll out 4G-LTE networks across the country, and we are still counting.
The implementation of any paradigm-shifting technology spawns manifold ecosystem changes such as spectrum usage, network infrastructure and devices. While newer bands will be made available for 5G services in India, the reserve price for the spectrum bands, recommended by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) at around $0.23/MHz/pop (for metros), is almost twice compared to $0.12/MHz/pop auctioned in the UK in June 2018.
At TRAI’s pricing, owning a block of 20 MHz spectrum across circles in the 3.3-3.6 GHz band will cost a staggering Rs 98,000 crore or so. Also, high-frequency bands such as these will require more investments in cell sites because of their low-propagation characteristics. Even though a combination of sub-1 GHz and 3.3-3.6 GHz is ideal for the 5G rollout, prices in the 700 MHz band remain very high while the rest of the sub-1 GHz bands will be mostly utiliszd for 2G (voice) and 4G-LTE services.
The government seems ready to conduct the 5G auction towards the end of 2019, but it is imperative for telcos to check the readiness of their ecosystems before plonking down truckloads of money to buy spectrum. On the other hand, if the US and China successfully adopt 5G by 2020 as expected, subsequent adopters will have the benefit of lower network equipment and device costs, thus making the ecosystem transition smoother.
An important 5G ecosystem prerequisite, essential to building use cases, is optic fibre networks. But India lags far behind with lower than 30 per cent use of fibre as on date compared to more than 70 per cent in the US and China. CRISIL Research estimates that India needs to lay another 10 lakh fibre km to be 5G-ready. That will require an investment of over Rs 1 lakh crore.
Nearly three-fourths of this cost will occur to get right-of-way (RoW) approvals, which can be as high as Rs 1 crore per km in metros. We believe it will take three-four years for telcos to reach the required fibre levels, given delays in RoW and other permissions.
For telcos, getting RoW approvals has been as much an issue as making investments and RoW issues may delay fibre deployment. However, leasing of fibre can significantly reduce the investments required, depending on sharing modalities, and it will also make India 5G-ready sooner.
Furthermore, the Indian telecom industry is struggling under a massive debt load of Rs 4 lakh crore (as of March 31, 2018). In the recent past, a combination of asset and stake sales and sponsor support have helped telcos maintain their debt levels. But bundling of voice with data amid a price war, coupled with high investments, has resulted in low returns. We now see low single-digit returns on the capital employed in the industry compared to more than 15 per cent three-four years ago. So, telcos need to explore areas of revenue generation to make such investments viable.
While 5G-enabled devices are expected to enter India in late 2019 or early 2020, it may take another three-four years before mass adoption of affordable versions takes place. With the number of interconnected devices rising, the Internet of things will unfold newer revenue streams across domains such as healthcare, education and transportation. A lot is in store for Indian telcos, but things will not take a clear shape before fiscal 2023.
Copyright 2019. Living Media India Ltd
2021 Commercial 5G pilots in India; Cisco #1 in India Network Equipment
Commercial 5G pilot networks in India are expected by 2021. Upstart wireless network operator Reliance Jio has the advantage to transform its telecom network to offer newer technology, said a Cisco Systems top executive responsible for the APAC region.
“By 2021, India should finally see 5G commercial pilots,” Cisco Head of Asia Pacific & Japan – Service Provider Business Sanjay Kaul told ETT, adding that most of the country’s service providers were already on the journey towards 5G.
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has already asked equipment vendors— Cisco, Samsung, Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia— to partner with India service providers Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) to start 5G-based field trials as early as January 2019 and demonstrate India-specific use cases to smoothe commercial rollouts.
Cisco has enabled the Mumbai-based Reliance Jio to foray into the fourth generation (4G) technology-based voice over long-term evolution (VoLTE) services in September 2016, and the two companies are currently working together to develop content delivery through the cloud in a lower latency environment— a key 5G feature.
“Jio has an advantage with its greenfield network while others like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and even BSNL are transforming their network at a rapid pace,” Kaul said.
Earlier, billionaire Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Jio has said that it could launch 5G services within the few months after acquiring the required spectrum. Kaul believes that Reliance Jio and other telco incumbents would launch 5G-based digital services as the India government makes spectrum available at a cost bearable to the industry.
Cisco said that in a 5G environment, telecom networks network would truly become a service platform, and digital services uniquely crafted for small-and-mid-sized companies and consumers would help telcos to monetise their investments in network transformation and data center architecture.
“5G technology and architecture will truly provide service provider another opportunity to evolve from being a communication service provider to a true digital value player,” the Cisco executive added.
Jio also feels that telecom service operators should innovate to become a digital player in a competitive landscape.
4G and 5G networks would co-exist, according to Kaul, who attributed 4G for mass adoption of data and social networks, and added that 5G technology, unlike 3G and 4G, has technical features like low latency and high density.
Kaul believes that 4G is progressing with full throttle, and in a year’s time, it would be closer to 90% penetration in the country.
The incumbents— Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea are investing to make 4G networks widespread while the youngest telecom player Jio that has built next-generation all-IP data network, has already penetrated more than 90% of the country. The public-sector BSNL is yet to get 4G spectrum from the government to compete with rivals.
“We have covered 90% of the Indian population with 4G, and we’ll soon reach to 99% of the country,” Jio president Mathew Oommen said.
“4G is showing good results, and I think all operators are really going for country-wide coverage and are accelerating their efforts,” Kaul said, adding that the time for 5G has arrived in the country.
The department has said that it would be ready to hold mega airwaves sale including frequencies in the 3300-3600 Mhz range, used to offer high-speed 5G services, in the second half of 2019.
The Narendra Modi-led NDA government is banking on the newer technology with the telecom department setting up a high-level 5G Forum to oversee 5G roadmap and rollout of services in tandem with matured markets worldwide.
The company feels that the newer technology would be unique in terms of creating and enabling mission-critical applications in various vertical domains such as transport, healthcare, finance, and security.
https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/commercial-5g-pilots-in-2021-cisco/67254020
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Cisco Systems has emerged as a leader in India’s network equipment market with a clear lead over rivals such as Nokia and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) in the Ethernet, router and wireless local area network (WLAN) segments in the third quarter of 2018, according to an International Data Corporation (IDC) market research report.
“Cisco continues to dominate the Ethernet Switch market with a 65.7% share in Q3 2018, followed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Huawei,” IDC said, adding that Cisco accounted three-fourth of the router market in the same quarter.
With 65.7% market share, Cisco took a huge lead over Hewlett Packard Enterprise (6.7%), Huawei (3.3%) and Nokia (2.8%) in the Ethernet Switch market in the quarter.
According to IDC’s latest Asia/Pacific Quarterly Ethernet Switch Tracker, the Q3 2018 Ethernet Switch market in India stood at USD 160.3 million (by vendor revenue) with an excellent YoY growth of 34.4%.
ADC and Layer 3 categories predominantly drove the overall growth with high double-digit individual YoY rise, while Layer 2 also saw a YoY growth, though only marginal. The India government’s push towards digitalization through upgrade of public infrastructure and multiple smart city initiatives; telecom infrastructure modernization drives and banking sector’s continual investment in network infrastructure to improve customer experience, is expected to drive growth in the coming quarters. The router market in India reached $214.9 million with an exceptional year-on-year growth of 140.4%.
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The San Jose, CA based company also dominated the router segment with 75% share, while Nokia (11.2%), Huawei (7%) and Juniper (5.5%) trailed behind in Q3 2018.
Cisco has retained the top spot in the WLAN market with a 24.8% market share in Q3 2018, followed by TP-Link (17.3%) and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (15.3%).
“The Ethernet switch, router, and WLAN market are expected to grow in single digits in terms of compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for 2017-2022,” IDC said in a statement.
“Software-defined networking solutions are expected to gain prominence as the enterprise infrastructure evolves from human-dependent systems to self-servicing, fully automated and seamlessly integrated systems,” Ranganath Sadasiva, Director— Enterprise at IDC India said.
The market research firm, however, believes that government and enterprise digitalization initiatives would be expected to drive growth across product categories.
“Mobile workforce, anytime anywhere access to enterprise networks, security across multiple channels and shift towards cloud-based application workload are key drivers for investment in network infrastructure,” Dileep Nadimpalli, Research Manager— Storage at IDC India said.
https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prAP44587818
India to Develop Broadband Readiness Index of States
India’s government has revealed plans to introduce a broadband readiness index for the nation’s states as part of efforts to encourage an additional $100 billion investment in the telecoms sector.
India’s Telecom secretary Aruna Sundarajan told the Press Trust of India that the broadband readiness index will be vital for directing investments aimed at meeting the National Broadband Mission.
According to Ms. Sundarajan, there is a pressing need to increase the number of mobile base stations by three times and expand optical fiber rollouts by four times in order to meet the target of providing broadband for all.
India Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan, – File photo
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“According to a study by ICRIER (a research firm), USD 100 billion investment will have seven-fold multiplier effect on GDP. There is a need of a national mission to make this happen. We are going to launch broadband readiness index for states which will be vital for investments,” Sundararajan told PTI. She said the Ministry of Electronics and IT has also shown interest in states readiness index and want to expand it further.
The telecom ministry will hold first workshop on implementation of the National Digital Communications Policy (NDCP) which envisions US $100 billion investment in telecom sector by 2022, broadband connectivity at 50 megabit per second speed to every citizen, telecom connectivity at every corner of India and creating 40 lakh jobs.
“This is first preparatory national workshop on implementation of NDCP in which 25 states have confirmed to participate. Here we will launch National Broadband Mission to achieve objective of broadband for all,” Sundararajan said.
Industry leaders and associations will discuss at the NDCP workshop issues they are facing in states especially in rolling out telecom infrastructure which in turn impact investments.
“We want to ensure that 5G is not limited to urban areas. It should reach rural areas. For this, we have to work with states to ensure that there is 100 per cent penetration of optical fibre cables. Without massive OFC penetration, 5G services will not expand. States have to provide smooth right of way permissions,” Sundararajan added.
As part of the India government’s National Digital Communications Policy, the government aims to ensure all citizens have access to 50Mbps broadband by 2022. The initiative also envisions the creation of 5 million new jobs.
Sundarajan added that the government is eager to ensure that 5G is not limited to early areas, but extends to rural areas as well. To achieve this the government wants to work with states to ensure 100% penetration of fiber.
“We have to roll out Wi-Fi services in rural and urban areas. To deliver benefit of NDCP to people and create jobs, states have to come forward. We will do comparative evaluation of all states and highlight best policies for other states to adopt it,” Sundararajan said.
The DoT has awarded task to roll out wifi services in 62,0000 panchayats to Telecommunications Consultants India Limited (TCIL) and is working with ITI for setting up wifi hotpsots in other panchayats.
“Broadband services have been started in all panchayats covered under Phase one. Now we are looking at utilisation of broadband where states need to come forward and identify institutions like school, police stations etc that are to be connected with wifi,” Sundararajan said.
Meanwhile, the telecom ministry has launched a tender to roll out 1 million W-Fi hotspots across all 250,000 village panchayats (local government areas) in the nation. The government is encouraging states to identify institutions that are to be connected with Wi-Fi, such as schools and police stations.
References:
Samsung deploying small cells in large volumes for Reliance Jio in India
Samsung Networks is deploying small cells in large volume for indoor coverage for Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio, which is set to have 99% population coverage soon in the country, according a Samsung executive.
“We have seen drive happening on indoor small cells. But that doesn’t mean that outdoor isn’t happening. Outdoor is happening at a good speed basis the site availability and so on… We will continue to expand on this piece of the network [indoor] because there are places where it’s more value to go that way,” Srini Sundararajan, Senior Vice President and Head of Networks Business at Samsung India, told ET.
“Jio tells us what their network requirements are, and we support…indoor always volume looks larger because devices are smaller and are easy to deploy and are self-configured,” he added.
Samsung Networks had earlier this year obtained a new 4G LTE network expansion contract from its sole customer in India, Reliance Jio, to increase the telco’s 4G network penetration from around 75% to 99% by Diwali this year.
The South Korean company is the sole 4G equipment provider to Jio with contracts to supply wireless base station equipment for over 140,000 sites for pan-India coverage last year, ET had earlier reported.
Image courtesy of Economic Times Telecom (India)
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Sundararajan said that Jio is expanding its networks for both coverage and capacity needs in the country. “It has to be both. There are still parts of the country we need to increase the coverage. Some of the hilly areas or remote areas. For every project, there is a certain percentage of sites for coverage and a large percentage is for capacity,” he added.
For capacity, Jio has started commercial deployment of massive mimo technology in areas where it is not able to add new sites easily.
In addition to 4G wireless equipment, Samsung is also providing packet core technology to Jio. The executive said that the virtualised packet core will play a crucial role in the 5G scenario. Samsung is currently preparing to conduct 5G field trials in New Delhi in the first quarter of the next year, and is working closely with the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
“We have a lot to offer similar to what we did on 4G, and which is why we said that we will partner with the DoT. We are directly partnering with the DoT to ensure that we listen to the needs of the government,” the executive said.
He added that the government’s involvement in these 5G field trials is very crucial for the successful commercial roll out since there will be 5G use cases that will have “societal value” along with the business value.
“The government is very proactively enabling and promoting to grow the 5G network. They are very aware that it is the ecosystem, and not just a vendor or operator. So they tend to bring different players into it to ensure that we are able to provide a high-value system for the country,” he added.
Samsung will be conducting the trial using the millimeter wave (mmwave) spectrum even as other vendors like Huawei plan to conduct trials in the mid-band. Sundararajan said that the millimeter wave band will offer a large chunk of spectrum that can result in uses cases like fixed wireless access (FWA) with huge capacity for data services. “We need to have the technology in the mmwave to enable the true vision of the government,” he said.
Samsung is currently doing 3.5Ghz trials in the mid-band in South Korea, and in the US, we are doing mmwave trials. “We are technology agnostic, but use cases will drive the adoption of one of these bands,” he said.
References:
Reliance Jio Blankets India with Inexpensive 4G Service; Where are the Profits?
India Selects Cisco, Samsung, Nokia, Ericsson for 5G trials; Bars Huawei and ZTE
India’s DoT Creates Dedicated 5G Technology Test Bed after Ericsson 5G Demonstration
India Mobile Congress 2018: Telecom Equipment Vendors to Invest over Rs 4,000 crore in India; Samsung in Spotlight
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.