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    Telcos to move DoT to stop adoption of India-specific 5G standards, say costs will jump by 40%

    Synopsis

    Telcos are set to write to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to urge that India aligns with the rest of the world and adopts the global 5G network standard already approved by the International Telecom Union (ITU) to leverage global 5G ecosystem benefits to ensure cost-effective rollouts and availability of 5G devices at affordable rates.

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    KOLKATA: Phone companies will shortly seek the telecom department’s intervention to stop adoption of an India-specific 5G standard backed by a local telecom standards agency, warning such a move could jack up 5G rollout costs by almost 30-40% and make 5G phones exorbitant, spoiling the business case for 5G services in India.

    Telcos are set to write to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to urge that India aligns with the rest of the world and adopts the global 5G network standard already approved by the International Telecom Union (ITU) to leverage global 5G ecosystem benefits to ensure cost-effective rollouts and availability of 5G devices at affordable rates.

    They are likely to also caution the government that adoption of an India-centric 5G radio interface technology (RIT) standard, proposed by the Telecom Standards Development Society India (TSDSI), could trigger serious inter-operability issues between networks and devices that could in future pose challenges for foreigners with 5G handsets to roam in India and for Indian 5G users to roam on overseas 5G networks.

    “Adoption of a local 5G standard proposed by TSDSI will result in India islanding itself from the rest of the world in the global 5G space, which will trigger serious interoperability challenges between networks/devices and lead to us missing out on leveraging economies of scale benefits stemming from a global 5G ecosystem,” a top executive of one of India’s biggest telcos told ET.

    He added that 5G gear and phones, in such a scenario, would be costly as global vendors and handset makers will have to design and manufacture customised products purely for the India market, which would translate in lower volumes.

    The TSDSI though dismissed such concerns, saying there won’t be any cost implications as the enhancements require just a software change. “There’s no rationale to the claim of increase in cost” as there is no specific input (to suggest) that a major cost impact is associated with the enhancement being proposed,” said TSDSI’s chairman, Prof Bhaskar Ramamurthi.

    The TSDSI standard calls for deployment of 5G services in the 3.4 GHz band and fixing the inter-site distance (ISD) between mobile towers at 12 km, which is at odds with the 3GPP-backed 5G standard that advocates 5G deployment in the more efficient 700 MHz band and pegs the ISD at 6 km. The 3GPP’s global standards govern operations of 4G LTE networks worldwide, and its recommended 5G standard has been cleared by ITU.

    Ramamurthi though said TSDSI as a partner of 3GPP is a joint-owner of 3GPP specifications, and accordingly, dismissed any cost impact on 5G base stations in future. “Both the 3GPP-only and 3GPP + TSDSI-compliant phones costing nearly the same will also coexist and interoperate in networks all over the world,” he said.

    But telcos aren't convinced, and are likely to tell DoT that the TSDSI-backed standard also won’t meet performance criteria for 5G deployments in rural India, especially for use cases around agriculture and remote education, a view that the TSDSI chairman refutes.

    TSDSI’s 5G standard, he said, provides an enhancement to 3GPP’s specifications to enhance the ISD from 6 km to 12 km for low-mobility large-cell rural use-case since that is the distance between towers that will be placed in gram panchayats (read: village blocks) by the BharatNet national broadband project for 33% of India’s villages. “This is the only way to ensure 95% mobile coverage for all villages as the 6 km ISD provides around 60% coverage.”

    At press time, COAI did not reply to ET’s queries.


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