Girish Bhatia, Head of Sales Engineering, Ciena India
The 5G ecosystem in India recently celebrated the first year of the launch of commercial 5G services. As per the recent press release issued by the Indian government, 5G services have been rolled out in all 28 states and eight union territories. In one of the fastest 5G network rollouts in the world, more than 200,000 sites covering 700 districts have been installed. A recent CRISIL report also says that India is likely to have more than 300 million 5G subscribers by the end of the financial year 2024-25.
Two telcos, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, have also launched fixed wireless access (FWA) services recently to help bridge the digital divide and provide high-speed quality broadband in rural and remote areas.
5G will have a transformative impact on the overall social and economic growth of the country and is expected to create an economic impact of $1 trillion by 2035, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). 5G will also accelerate the digital transformation of businesses, whether they are large, medium or small, by empowering them to leverage and deliver services that require very high-speed and ultra-low latency.
The question on everyone’s mind is – how can telcos monetise their substantial 5G investments? Before we can answer this question, it should be noted that 4G monetisation improved a few years ago when the uptick of high-resolution videos, bigger-size file sharing, and applications suddenly took precedence in our everyday lives. It is difficult to know exactly when 5G monetisation will become the norm but it will take time as new and emerging 5G-centric applications are adopted by the masses.
Maximising the opportunities from 5G
5G requires a fundamental shift in how networks are designed and built, which allows for significant improvements in end-to-end performance when compared to past generations of mobile networks. However, new use cases and applications must be created to leverage this new level of performance. As past generations of mobile networks have shown, this will take time to develop as 5G networks continue to roll out for improved coverage.
Indian digital users will expect a best-in-class customer experience. Indian telcos will be able to keep up with growing expectations only if they ensure network performance also maintains pace. For example, several 5G use cases, like Industry 4.0 and the transformation of public response systems, demand networks designed and built to deliver on stringent service level agreements (SLAs). Any unscheduled service disruption, minor or major, may not only impact productivity, but may also cost lives. Additionally, because it is expected that a major contributor of 5G revenue will come from enterprises, business success will be dependent on a network that can satisfy their unique demands.
Preparing the network for 5G
While in the initial phase, Indian telcos are investing in the radio access networks (RAN) part of the mobile network infrastructure. However, as the number of subscribers and usage per subscriber grows, telcos must invest in the wireline aggregation and core networks as well, since the only wireless part of a subscriber’s data journey is from their smartphone to a radio atop a tower or the side of a building. The rest of the data’s journey, from the tower or building to a data centre, is over a packet-optical wireline network. As the consumption of 5G service increases in both consumer and enterprise segments, telcos will experience a massive increase in the capacity demand due to higher 5G performance capabilities as well as newly adopted cloud and artificial intelligence applications.
To accommodate new technologies, telcos are also increasing end-user bandwidth by a minimum of 2 to 3 times, and this also has a direct impact on wireline transport networks. This means significant xHaul network upgrades are required to maintain pace with the ongoing wireless RAN upgrades.
Adapting to a 5G era
It is crucial to build a reliable, agile, and flexible network geared to ensure a best-in-class experience at all times and be ready for what is next. This is also crucial as telcos look to leverage 5G to grow their share in the enterprise segment. Network slicing, a critical differentiator of 5G networks when compared to previous generations of “best-effort” mobile networks, allows telcos to manage multiple virtual networks over a common physical network infrastructure. Network slices can be created based on various network performance parameters like capacity, latency, reliability, sustainability, or security, among others, as per the specific needs of the enterprise. This creates unparalleled opportunities for telcos to monetise their assets by offering dedicated network slices for different requirements.
Indian telcos have been preparing their networks for 5G for several years now. Virtualisation of the core network is an important component of this strategy and fundamental to how 5G networks are designed. In addition, the use of the cloud allows them to quickly scale, where and when required.
Indian telcos have set a new benchmark by rolling out 5G networks at breakneck speed. It is now time to take another giant leap by building networks that are designed to not only provide the best-in-class experience but also ensure the delivery of demanding service obligations. This will go a long way in helping India pave the way to not only be the fastest in achieving 5G network rollout, but also be a pioneer in the widespread commercialisation of 5G services.
