ITU (ITU-R) will finalize the candidate technologies
as part of IMT-2020 by the year 2020 and once the 5G technologies and use cases
are frozen and agreed to then these are expected to serve the needs for the
next decade. In simple words, 5G will be there for at least 2030 considering
previous generations of technologies. If countries like India do not come
forward and take the required steps to bring together the industry, academia
and the policy makers, they will miss the bus to move to the next level. Not
only will these countries fail to energize their industries but the unique
requirements to serve their unique needs will simply not be there. The five
regional groupings will lobby to ensure that standards are set to meet the
needs of their societies and industry. India for instance has quite a lot to
catch up on infrastructure like electricity, roads, health care and education.
5G will need to cater for these needs as an enabling technology for IOT and
other services. Can a user in the US expect to see that a street light which
gets broken takes a year to get repaired? Or ensure that a remote school has
interrupted electricity through effective monitoring? Or a remote hospital has
electricity? Some basic things are taken for granted in the advanced countries.
To deliver these basic services 5G can help but these requirements need to be
there through uses cases and possibly through the standards through which the
technologies will see light of the day.
Two recent developments in this area seem to indicate
that things are moving in the desired direction although the pace is still much
to be seen. One, India has now one Telecom Standards Organization (SDO) - TSDSI.
This new organization has come after a couple of attempts in this direction
through DOSTI and GISFI. TSDSI is now
formally an organizational partner of 3GPP along with six other SDOs of the 5
regions/countries which are active in the area. The second development is that the
global body GSMA has elected its chairman for the next two years from India.
Airtel’s chairman Sunil Mittal will take over in 2017.
Hopefully these and other steps will see the
needs and requirements of developing and aspiring nations to be put in the
right forums. However, if we look at the regional forums set up in the 5
regions - EU, Japan, Korea, China and US each has come up with a forum to focus
on 5G. The 5G Americas (US), 5GPP (Europe), 5GMF ( Japan), IMT-2020 Promotion
Group (China) and 5G Forum (Korea) are a pointer in this direction.
For setting up a SDO different stakeholders like
the ministry, industry, academia has come together. Setting up a SDO and
getting it globally recognised is hard and it has come after many years to
India. Now a similar initiative to focus especially on 5G needs to come up. Will
the country’s Telecom SDO be sufficient to drive the initiative or a focussed
organization is required? No doubt the SDO can help in the standards process
but for an ecosystem to come up some extra dedicated efforts would be required
to bring different stakeholders together. Otherwise fragmentation on efforts
will be there. True India is not a major manufacturing base for electronics and
telecom but a concerted effort for a common objective will help reap the
benefits. What can be the implications if India misses the bus?
To my mind, the top 5 reasons if we fail to give
thrust to emerging technologies can be
1.
Industry growth
GSMA in
its report “The Mobile Economy India 2016” highlights that the operators have made CAPEX investments worth
INR 154,100 crores ($23 billion) over the last five years which is slated to
increase to around INR 227,800 crores
($34 billion) for the period to 2020. Investments are set to increase in the
industry. What will be the right match between investing in existing
technologies and incoming ones like 5G?
2.
Unique needs of India not getting reflected in
the international standards.
Considering
the spread of the country, demographics, terrain, state of infrastructure, Indian
needs do not exactly match the needs of the more advanced countries. This does
not mean that everything is different but there are subtle differences that
need to be taken care of. Having a forum
will give more weight age to the SDO.
3.
Ability to project itself as a technological
power.
To raise
its status in the comity of nations, multi pronged efforts are needed in economic,
military, political, diplomatic and technology areas. The world is aware of the
strength of the Indian IT sector. In other domains it is still not much counted
where most advanced technologies are imported. 5G is an area which is emerging
and the country can make its voice heard in this high technology arena through
adequate and appropriate measures.
4.
Policy and Regulation
Taking an
early role in 5G, India can build up its policy and regulations in terms of
addressing market needs, diverse industries, security, spectrum and
technological needs and ensure that end users are given the service they have
asked for. Best practices can be shared on the right policies and regulations
with other countries. To start with India can cooperate and collaborate with
different regional and trade blocks of which India is part of like BRICS, SAARC
in advocating the right mix of policies and regulations.
5.
Meeting the needs of other industries
As IOT/
M2M sees increased interest, wireless will play an important role no doubt. Vast
tracks of the country cannot simply be accessed through fixed line or optical
fibres and this scenario is unlikely to see much difference in the coming years
simply because of the spread and geography. Through its various functionalities like
catering for low power consumption at the device end, better latency and higher
throughputs added with support for multiple and diverse applications can
sufficiently aid in the needs of other sectors. Indian telecom needs are unique
and this can be said for other sectors also. Indian thrust in 5G can hopefully
address the unique need of other industries.
Standards have not been frozen for 5G but it has
started and all the big players and countries have set the ball rolling. There is
still time to put up the act and stay in relevance. A forum that will have
representatives from the government, regulator, service providers,
manufacturers, universities and R&D centres to spearhead 5G with a common
vision and mission is the need. Otherwise
India stands the risk to remain a marginal player in the emerging wireless technology
space.
.
.
