5G doesn't seem like it's coming to India anytime soon
The Indian telecom sector has seen a massive boom, especially in terms of data, ever since the entry of Reliance Jio. With competitive data rates, and affordable 4G, the Mukesh Ambani-led company successfully managed to cause a ripple in the stagnating puddle that was the telecom industry. With a more stable future for data consumption in India, the telecom giants now look towards the next big thing: 5G technology.
Earlier this year, Mukesh Ambani said: "Jio network can be upgraded to 5G and beyond. By the end of 2017, Jio's network will cover 99 per cent population of the country."
And he means it. Samsung and Reliance Jio have entered into a tie-up to usher in 5G technology in India. "The massive deployment of over a million cells across India is especially remarkable. We will strive to create new paradigms for long-term evolution (LTE) -advanced pro and 5G by closely cooperating with Jio as a unified workforce," said Youngky Kim, president and head of Networks Business at Samsung Electronics.
But Jio is not the only one. Airtel, Reliance Jio's biggest competitor has plans to take the Mukesh Ambani-led company head-on. Nokia and Bharti Airtel have announced their plans to bring 5G services to India.
According to a report in the Financial Express, Abhay Savargaonkar, the director of network services (India and South Asia) for Bharti Airtel, said, “The 5G and Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications have tremendous potential to transform lives and we are pleased to partner with Nokia to enable these future technologies for our customers.”
Sanjay Malik, the head of India market for Nokia said, “After our successful association with Bharti Airtel for 2G, 3G and 4G technologies, we are proud to partner for the future of mobile networks. We will leverage our global experience in 5G-related industry projects and collaborations to enable Bharti Airtel to prepare their networks for greater capacity, coverage and speed.”
But is India ready for 5G?
Probably not. According to a report in the Economic Times, industry stakeholders and experts pointed out that backhaul will be a major challenge in the migration from existing networks to 5G with less than 20 per cent Indian networks running via fibre optic cables.
"One of the fundamental requirements for 5G is strong backhaul, which is simply not there and that is the most time consuming part and it is extremely expensive in today's condition in India," said Jalaj Choudhri, the EVP of Reliance Communications said to ET.
"Fibre infrastructure has to be considered civic infrastructure rather than a property of the service provider. The investment has to be made through civic bodies so that service providers can actually leverage that infrastructure," added Choudhri.
What is backhaul?
Backhaul is a network that connects cells sites to central exchange. It is basically the intermediate links between the core (or backbone) network and the small sub-networks. Designing wireless backhaul solutions to meet these 5G challenges is not an easy task. The choice of backhaul technology must take account of such parameters as capacity, cost, reach, and the need for such resources as frequency spectrum, optical fiber, wiring, or rights of way.
The problem is, in India, more than 80 per cent of cell sites are connected through microwave backhaul, while under 20 per cent sites are connected through fibre. Microwave backhaul has bandwidth issue since it uses traditional bands providing 300 Mbps of capacity, whereas fiber-based backhaul can offer unlimited capacity and low latency, something that is essential for 5G technologies. But that’s not the only solution. Higher capacity microwave links can also be brought into use.
Pipe dreams
While the commercial launch of 5G technology is still some time away (2019-2020), there is a whole new infrastructural change that the telecom sector has to invest in, before this dream turns into reality. At present, the condition of our existing data infrastructure is rather poor.
While we see advances every day, for example, Reliance Jio's foray into optic fiber based broadband is a welcoming news, the fact remains that our telecom industry is still struggling with something as basic as a 3G network.
The state of internet in India is so bad that the number of users of Facebook Lite — a stripped down version of Facebook, which was launched in India back in 2015, targeted towards people who face poor internet connectivity and low speeds — in India has doubled from 100 million to 200 million, in just under a year.
Even Satya Nadella, the Microisoft CEO, announced Skype Lite, an optimised version of Skype that will provide better experience for video and audio calling service, even at low connection speeds of 3G and 2G, a challenge internet users face in India.
Well, the future is right in front of us, but it’s still way out of reach.