India Dept of Telecommunications – IEEE ComSoc Technology Blog

Bharti Airtel said that it is engaging new partners to enable 5G use cases for various consumer and enterprise use cases in India. It will also start a campaign to educate users about their next 5G smartphone to ensure if they can get the best experience with support to all relevant bands.

A handset to support all possibilities of 5G is very important, Bharti Airtel’s chief technology officer Randeep Sekhon told ET. Airtel will come out with a campaign for users who want to buy 5G handsets informing them about various checks of their particular handsets to make sure the handset works well in India across not just 5G but various other bands and carrier aggregation. “This is important when you choose a 5G handset to get the best experience,” he said.

The Sunil Mittal-led telecom operator had recently urged the India Department of Telecommunications to bring uniform guidelines to develop the 5G smartphone ecosystem. It recommended that any new 5G handset sold in India must support all existing bands in India for 5G, including the mmWave bands.

Indian telecom operators have spectrum in the 2G, 3G and 4G bands which can be refarmed and used for 5G NSA or 5G SA and also use Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) for fast deployment. They want handset brands to support all existing spectrum bands like 1800/2100/2300 MHz and sub-GHz bands 800/900 Mhz.

The telecom operator said that it successfully conducted a cloud gaming session on its 5G trial network in Manesar using the 3.5GHz spectrum band. Sekhon said that “immersive entertainment” will be another major consumer use case of 5G. “But, for A/R and V/R, content needs to be created and be personalized at the edge. We are seeing how we can make it real.”

Airtel is currently using the 3.5 GHz spectrum band for 5G trials in Delhi-NCR and Mumbai. Sekhon said that the telco hasn’t started 5G trials using mmwave band. “As and when we will get equipment, we will try that too. 3.5 GHz anchored with traditional 4G bands are currently being used for trials.”

“For the B2B, industry 4.0, high speed, high latency and mass concurrency around IoT cloud and 5G are required.. We are working with many of our industry customers on creating fir infra, FMCG, factory, mining. This will be relevant,” Sekhon added.

The CTO said that telecom operators can’t do everything by themselves and their main focus is to build the best infrastructure to enable partners. Airtel, he said, will have various partners to enable 5G use cases like education, e health and for industries.

“Some partnerships are for initial 5G trials and some will for massifying the roll out. The 5G real experience will happen when all stakeholders ecosystem partners are available,” Sekhon said.

Bharti Airtel used a spectrum block in the 1,800MHz band to operate both 5G and 4G simultaneously on its network. Reuters

Opinion:

According to the Ken, a lot of the blame for the wasting of India’s telecom sector lies with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India or Trai. But it, in turn, suffers from an overbearing parent—the Department of Telecom. The dysfunctional relationship manifests in how Trai’s funded, the rules governing the appointment of its members, and its ability to penalize Indian telcos, among other things. If this goes unaddressed, Pratap writes, India’s telecom sector risks slipping further into ruin.

With 5G, the lines between telecom and digital tech will blur faster than ever before. Regulating this will require a different skill set—one Trai lacks. Many of its middle managerial and leadership team come from public sector enterprises in telecom or the DoT. They are unlikely to have kept pace with evolving tech.

A report from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), offered a scathing indictment of Trai—albeit not explicitly. According to ITU’s Global ICT Regulatory Outlook 2020, India scores lower than countries such as Pakistan and a few Southeast Asian and African countries in terms of the maturity and collaborative approach shown by telecom regulatory bodies.

The need for Trai to get its house in order is all the more urgent given how the telecom space is changing. While inter-operator skirmishes have subsided, a new conflict is emerging—between heavily regulated telcos and virtually unregulated Big Tech companies. Both sides have already locked horns on deregulation of specific spectrum bands. Going forward there will also be overlaps between Trai and other regulators when it comes to matters such as data protection and OTT regulations, for example. Now more than ever, India needs a competent and transparent telecom regulator.

References:

https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/airtel-getting-partners-on-board-to-enable-5g-use-cases-to-start-awareness-campaign-for-5g-handsets/85864492

Trai, try again: India’s toothless telecom regulator fights for more powers

India lagging in 5G unless spectrum prices decrease & 5Gi standard debate is settled

Intel working with Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel on 5G for India

https://www.livemint.com/industry/telecom/airtel-tests-5g-over-commercial-network-in-hyderabad-11611818745849.html

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