India needs a 'virtual' push for faster 5G adoption

It is only recently that India has started to work towards creating and developing a 5G ecosystem in the country. The focus till now has to leap from 2G to 4G.

A GSMA report on Mobile Economy 2018 says the majority of mobile users in the country would shift from the 2G network (currently 65% of the users are on 2G) to 4G (62%) by 2025. The report further predicts a paltry 1% users would have shifted to the 5G network.

Given the immense economic potential a 5G-enabled ecosystem holds for the country, it can hardly afford to be left behind. The government has, therefore, started to take concrete steps to gain an early mover advantage in the global 5G space. The service providers, though, also need to do their bit.

The government formed a high-level forum to look into the modalities of creating India-specific 5G use cases in the field of agriculture, learning, manufacturing, and health. The forum in its report has among other things said that India would make significant investments (estimated at USD 100 billion) over next five-to-seven years to create nationwide 5G infrastructure.

To begin with, it has decided to invest $31 million in setting up a testbed for the trial of 5G use cases and technologies. This testbed will be created in collaborations with the country's premier institutes – Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Delhi, Kanpur, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is also looking at the development of 5G use cases in the areas of agriculture, education, and health.

The government hopes to roll out 5G services by 2020, a target it has set for itself, given the immense possibilities 5G technology has. The 5G technology helps in tiding over infrastructure barriers a developing country like India has and allows the government to deliver many services on a digital platform, thus improving governance at the top level.

Imagine that children in a remote village can be provided education remotely; life-saving surgeries can be conducted remotely. Further 5G comes with low latency and ultra high speed which increase the efficiency of the public safety infrastructure manifold. More than basic connectivity, 5G will have an impact on the overall quality of lives of millions of people.

It will lead to incredible innovations in artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT). These use cases can also open up plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurs to try new ways of delivering services and create new avenues for revenue generation.

New Technology, New Approach

To achieve the speed and latency level that 5G promises, telecom service providers need a whole new approach in the way networks are managed and operated.

For example, to achieve low latency levels of less than one millisecond, devices with the user and content providers need to be closer. One way of achieving this is through network densification, which involves adding more cell sites to increase the capacity of the network. Since 5G network promises connect millions of devices and to provide network support for all of them, densification is an effective way of delivering on that promise.

Another crucial feature of 5G is to be able to deliver customized services to a small set of customers within the same network. For example, it can offer services to say two different sets of customers – a hospital chain for remote surgeries and an IoT factory. Each of these customers may require different speed, allocation or capacity. 5G can achieve it within the same network by Network Slicing. Slicing requires the operator to divide the network into different slices, where each slice works as a separate virtualized network. Slicing enables operators to provide customized services without incurring additional cost in a highly competitive market like India.

Another requirement for the successful roll-out of 5G services across the globe is a set of standards. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), which sets the standards of telecommunication technologies, unveiled the first set of 5G standards only last year. These standards are likely to be cleared this year after which the body can deliberate on next level of standards.

Virtualized networks: A pre-requisite for 5G

While all the major telecom operators in India – Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio – have started exploring 5G technologies like carrier aggregation and Massive MIMO, it is no secret that telecom networks in India are still hardware-driven and hence are not capable of supporting 5G services. For 5G technology to work, it needs networks that are secure, reliable, flexible and quick to adapt to technology upgrades. This can be achieved through virtualization of networks. Virtualized networks are easy to deploy, cost-effective and easily upgradable.

With majority services still on 2G, the first step would be to shift 2G services from hardware-centric networks to software-driven virtual networks. This not only brings down the cost but also allows the service providers to expand faster in areas still untouched by telecom networks.

A benefit of having a virtualized network is that the transition from 2G to higher generation networks – 4G or 5G – is smoothers and faster. This is because it a software-driven network can virtualize different technology functionalities on a single platform. The upgradation itself is smooth and doesn't require a visit from site engineer. Further, since it covers a larger area, the cost of the setting of the network is much less, and the return on investment is much sooner for the service providers.

For India to play the catch-up in the 5G market, both the government and the service providers have to come up with newer yet cost-effective strategy to be in the race. The benefits of 5G are immense, and India needs to explore an out-of-the-box strategy to maximize the gains from this technology. Virtualized 2G networks would not only increase the effectiveness of existing services but also allow them to move to 4G and 5G networks in future seamlessly.

Kaitki Agarwal
Co-founder and VP-Development, Parallel Wireless