The Economic Times daily newspaper is available online now.

    E-band waves crucial for offloading data traffic on 5G rollout: Telecom industry

    Synopsis

    "Without E-band, it is impossible to meet requirements for 5G. E-band plays a very critical role in offloading burden,” said Abhay Savargaonkar, director-networks at Bharti Airtel.

    5G
    Government is aiming to make a passage for high-speed 5G services in tandem with the global timeline of 2020.
    Fifth generation or ‘5G' technology deployment will need airwaves in the E-band for offloading data traffic while the proliferation of fibre optic-based network for mobile backhaul remains low, industry executives and experts have said.

    “Without E-band, it is impossible to meet requirements for 5G. E-band plays a very critical role in offloading burden and is a dire necessity in India,” said Abhay Savargaonkar, director-networks at Bharti Airtel, at the ETTelecom 5G Congress on Friday.

    Elevate Your Tech Prowess with High-Value Skill Courses

    Offering CollegeCourseWebsite
    MITMIT Technology Leadership and InnovationVisit
    Indian School of BusinessISB Professional Certificate in Product ManagementVisit
    IIT DelhiIITD Certificate Programme in Data Science & Machine LearningVisit
    Bharti Airtel, according to the executive, has 160,000 sites, of which only a third can be backed by fibre, making it imperative for the industry to use radio waves in E-band for 5G .

    “A lot of work in terms of technology standardisation and finding right bands is required to be done while 3GPP is driving standardisation. There are various negotiations going on at regional and national level,” said Laurent Bodusseau, senior directorspectrum at GSMA. The London-based group represents interests of mobile operators worldwide, including top Indian telcos such as Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone India.

    Bodusseau said it was important to put the right amount of spectrum on the table; seven different spectrum bands have been found suitable for 5G deployment. “Airwaves in 600 Mhz would be relevant to India as 70% people live in rural areas. This band has propagation characteristics and requires less infrastructure.”

    Industry representatives who were discussing challenges and opportunities in a panel moderated by Rohan Dhamija, head of India and South Asia for Analysys Mason at the 5G Congress, reaffirmed that 5G’s success is dependent on backhaul, for which allocation of radiowaves in Eband and V-band will be critical.

    The Modi government is aiming to make a passage for high-speed 5G services in tandem with the global timeline of 2020, and has set up a high-level 5G forum with a corpus of Rs 500 crore for research and development.

    “5G will bring efficiency and from a spectrum point of view, we are very strongly placed in India,” Abhay Karandikar, chairman, Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI) said, adding that opening up certain bands for the backhaul will be important for 5G launch. “4G and 5G will coexist. 4G will continue to remain as an anchor band and it is going to be a very smooth evolution from 4G to 5G with 2020-21 as an expected deployment timeline.”

    “5G is capable of delivering speeds of up to 10 Gbps and BSNL is confident that it would come out strong in 5G. We have net fibre up to 1 lakh gram panchayats and we are in position to provide necessary bandwidth for 5G,” said RK Mittal, director-consumer mobility at BSNL.

    “For cross-industry applications, any telco service will have to work in sync with different operators since no single operator could drive a 5G-backed single solution,” said Anupam Vasudev, chief marketing officer at Aircel, while responding to question from KPMG TMT leader Mritunjay Kapur on how carriers must adapt to the changing business landscape with changing device ecosystem.

    “We will be needing millions of radiating points. However, with 15-25% connected sites, we are not going to reach there since operators alone can’t be connecting these many sites,” said Bimal Dayal, CEO at Indus Towers.

    He, however, added that infrastructure will play a vital role in making 5G flourish, a point backed by Vodafone India's director P Balaji, as both spoke to Prashant Singhal, TMT leader for emerging markets at EY, underlining the criticality of robust infrastructure being key to success for 5G.
    The Economic Times

    Stories you might be interested in