Challenges of 5G communication
As per the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
committee on digital economic policy, 5G will not only amplify the country's
GDP but will also open up new avenues of employment and digitize the
economy. 5G will also open opportunities for India to connect with global
markets and take advantage of economies of scale. The 5G high-level forum is
drawing up an action plan in this direction. 5G once implemented, will open
up new avenues of revenue for service providers.
There are now signs of coming out of it amidst fresh PE investments/FDI in the sector and regulatory support, but CAPEX spend as per IDC is expected to remain muted for Indian operators over 2019 to 2024. This is largely due to the fact that any increase in material change will not immediately result in the CAPEX increase. Plus, Reliance Jio has already . shown its interest in vendor-agnostic procurement, so the dynamics of the industry could shift from CAPEX-led investments to OpEx-led ones with the move towards open source and cloud-based workloads. So, once the auction takes place next year in an optimistic scenario, 5G test licenses will be fallowed by technology trials, industry formulation, global and regional I cooperation with network sharing. So, the real commercialization is only expected by 2022 or 2023 realistically. According to a report of COAI, the telecom industry, along with DoT, is leaving no stone unturned in making India 5G ready, and by next year.
The biggest challenge is of course handset cost and localized use cases. Currently, 5G smartphones are available in the price range of 40,000Rs and above. Due to the Covid-19 crisis, and the battle between Russia and Ukraine manufacturing had been impacted, and so is the supply chain. Another challenge is to maintain the infrastructure in such difficult times of lockdown. Field forces faced a lot of issues in keeping towers and cables up and running. There was also a quick requirement of expanding the network capacities, which meant working round and against the clock.
According to COAI, while talking about 5G in India, the issues about the spectrum cannot be ignored. Traditionally, the spectrum has always been expensive. In India, 20MHz blocks in the 3,300-3,600MHz band for 5G services have been priced at 49.20 million dollars per MHz by TRAI in its recommendations. In Korea, for example, the same band was priced at 17 .2 million dollars per MHz in auctions. The most critical factor in the uptake of the 5G spectrum would be its price. The 5G high-level forum has lately recommended early allocation of 5G spectrum, increasing the quantum of spectrum available and reducing the prices. The initial expenses on equipment would also be costly.
There are now signs of coming out of it amidst fresh PE investments/FDI in the sector and regulatory support, but CAPEX spend as per IDC is expected to remain muted for Indian operators over 2019 to 2024. This is largely due to the fact that any increase in material change will not immediately result in the CAPEX increase. Plus, Reliance Jio has already . shown its interest in vendor-agnostic procurement, so the dynamics of the industry could shift from CAPEX-led investments to OpEx-led ones with the move towards open source and cloud-based workloads. So, once the auction takes place next year in an optimistic scenario, 5G test licenses will be fallowed by technology trials, industry formulation, global and regional I cooperation with network sharing. So, the real commercialization is only expected by 2022 or 2023 realistically. According to a report of COAI, the telecom industry, along with DoT, is leaving no stone unturned in making India 5G ready, and by next year.
The biggest challenge is of course handset cost and localized use cases. Currently, 5G smartphones are available in the price range of 40,000Rs and above. Due to the Covid-19 crisis, and the battle between Russia and Ukraine manufacturing had been impacted, and so is the supply chain. Another challenge is to maintain the infrastructure in such difficult times of lockdown. Field forces faced a lot of issues in keeping towers and cables up and running. There was also a quick requirement of expanding the network capacities, which meant working round and against the clock.
According to COAI, while talking about 5G in India, the issues about the spectrum cannot be ignored. Traditionally, the spectrum has always been expensive. In India, 20MHz blocks in the 3,300-3,600MHz band for 5G services have been priced at 49.20 million dollars per MHz by TRAI in its recommendations. In Korea, for example, the same band was priced at 17 .2 million dollars per MHz in auctions. The most critical factor in the uptake of the 5G spectrum would be its price. The 5G high-level forum has lately recommended early allocation of 5G spectrum, increasing the quantum of spectrum available and reducing the prices. The initial expenses on equipment would also be costly.
The latency, throughput, and scale are
important factors for any use case deployment, but battling out current
challenges pertaining to procurement, proving the ROI for a use case,
cultural alignment with DevOps teams, adoption of microservices, and
seamless use of orchestration platforms remain crucial for 5G's success in
India.
