Bharat B. Bhatia, President, ITU-APT Foundation of India, and Vice-Chairman, World Wireless Research Forum
Bharat B. Bhatia, President, ITU-APT Foundation of India, and Vice-Chairman, World Wireless Research Forum
In September 2021, the government initiated a series of telecom reforms to herald the beginning of a new era for the telecom sector and demonstrate its firm commitment to ensuring healthy growth of communications to support the massive economic development initiatives of the prime minister.
Remote working and work-from-home due to the Covid-19 pandemic have led to an unprecedented increase of over 80 per cent in the use of Wi-Fi during the past two years. A Wi-Fi Alliance study, titled “Covid-19 and the Economic Value of Wi-Fi”, found that global Wi-Fi traffic increased by over 80 per cent and there was a 70 per cent to 94 per cent increase in Wi-Fi use during the day.
It is estimated that the present use of Wi-Fi in India creates an economic value of about Rs 1.6 trillion every year. The Wi-Fi Alliance study predicts that the global economic value of Wi-Fi will rise to a staggering Rs 362 trillion ($4.9 trillion) by 2025, up from Rs 232 trillion in 2021. This economic value includes contributions from the use of Wi-Fi by consumers, businesses, service providers, and more.
The current regulations in India permit Wi-Fi in only the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequency bands. These two bands have only about 600 MHz of spectrum for all users as compared to over the 2 GHz that is needed. With work and study from home becoming the norm during the Covid pandemic and with an extremely high population density in India, the shortage of shared Wi-Fi spectrum needs to be addressed urgently.
In order to meet this severe shortage of Wi-Fi spectrum, many countries around the world have opened up new Wi-Fi bands. The two main new Wi-Fi bands are Wi-Fi 6e in the 6 GHz band and WiGig in the 60 GHz (V band). India should urgently delicence the 6 GHz band for Wi-Fi 6e. A separate proposal for V band delicensing has already been submitted by us last month. This delicensing of the 6 GHz band is key to India’s local manufacturing, innovation and exports, not just for telecom but for the industrial sector as a whole.
Internationally, more than 35 countries have delicensed the 6 GHz frequency band. These include the US, the UK, Canada, Korea, Brazil, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and countries in the European Union. The rationale for delicensing has been to enhance benefits to citizens while reaping the benefits of economic growth.
With the global delicensing of 6 GHz Wi-Fi, technology and product development is going on in full swing. This will represent a huge new global market for Wi-Fi technology, software and equipment. As Wi-Fi 6e is still a niche technology, it is easier for Indian telecom hardware and software companies to corner a large part of this futuristic global market, which we could not do in the case of 5 GHz Wi-Fi as it was delicensed in India after more than 20 years of the rest of the world. Since the developed world has already decided to use this band for Wi-Fi, eventually India will have to do the same, but by delicensing after 10 years, our young engineers and scientists will lose the edge in capturing a part of this global multi-billion dollar market opportunity.
The Government of India has recently launched the PM-WANI public Wi-Fi programme to accelerate the reach of broadband to the masses through the proliferation of public Wi-Fi. Due to the pandemic, the dependence on Wi-Fi increased manyfold for a number of applications including work-from-home, healthcare and education. Various studies have indicated that at least 2 GHz Wi-Fi spectrum is required to meet the need for increased home working.
Frequency band 5925-7025 MHz is allocated to fixed, mobile and satellite services in India’s National Frequency Allocation Plan 2018. Wi-Fi using the 6 GHz radio band opens up over 1 GHz of extra bandwidth, a boon for high congestion. This bandwidth is split into 14 channels of 80 MHz each or seven channels of 160 MHz each. Unlike existing Wi-Fi channels that are currently crammed into around just 600 MHz of spectrum, Wi-Fi 6e channels exist without overlap or interference. The use of this band for Wi-Fi will thus increase the efficiency of Wi-Fi networks by over four times.
Currently, this band is used in India for satellite uplink and point-to-point microwave links. Detailed technical studies have shown that Wi-Fi services can easily share this band with the existing services without any interference. Studies indicate that allowing for up to 2 per cent outdoor usage with maximum EIRPs up to 1W, sharing with satellites was feasible. Further, automated frequency coordination with licensed incumbent users such as point-to-point links using cognitive technologies can help further share this band for outdoor use, as shown in the accompanying diagram.
