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“When we started discussing how can India contribute to 5G<\/a> standards? Unfortunately, we were late. 5G was already a commercial service in some countries. But I think this is absolutely the right time, where you can start contributing and start shaping the 6G agenda to be in India. Otherwise, we are just adopting a global technology,” said Randeep Sekhon, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Bharti Airtel, in a fireside chat on the second day of ETTelecom 5G Congress Friday.
“We should shape the 6G agenda. The intellectual property which we should create as Indians in contributing to this 6G journey and making it relevant to the needs of countries like India, it will be absolutely the right time,” said Sekhon.
The Centre on March 22 unveiled the ‘Bharat 6G’ vision document which has recommended opening up more spectrum across all bands, including mmWave band, promoting research in the terahertz (THz) band, among others.
Minister of State (MoS) for Communications Devusinh Chauhan has said that India be in a position to develop a fully homegrown 6G stack by the end of this decade (2030-end).
“I think the timeline is excellent. We're starting a long journey to 6G. It is exciting to see India to be a part from the very beginning of a global community. The 6G vision is a first great stamping on a very long journey together in the mobile industry<\/a>,” Magnus Ewerbring, Chief Technology Officer (CTO)-APAC, Ericsson.
But even as 6G discussions are to gain momentum, Airtel is working with ecosystem partners including chip manufacturers, software and hardware vendors to manufacture 5G fixed wireless access<\/a> (FWA) device in India, a service that is touted as among the first use cases of the fifth-generation networks in the country due to low fixed broadband penetration.
“Bringing it earlier may probably make it a non-starter,” said Sekhon, citing the high prices of FWA devices. “I think, in a couple of quarters, you should start seeing it scaling.”.
“I think India can really accelerate 5G FWA. There is an excellent example of Wi-Fi devices. The thrust of India in rolling 5G will help the road to pushing FWA,” said Ewerbring.
On the other hand, Reliance Jio has publicly announced its 5G FWA solution, the Jio AirFiber, but the telco is yet to start commercially offering its FWA service.
The Swedish telecom gear maker in its Mobility Report 2022 has stated that enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) and fixed wireless access (FWA) are expected to be the early use cases for 5G in India which will help address the concern of the limited fixed broadband penetration levels in the country.
Ericsson has forecasted that there will be 300 million FWA connections globally by 2028. Of these over 300 million connections, the number of 5G FWA connections is expected to grow to around 235 million by 2028, representing almost 80 percent of the total FWA connections.
According to the Airtel CTO, the telecom operator has already started seeing green offshoots after deploying its 5G network in data-heavy regions and areas, such as around educational institutions.
“As we put this network across India and we see more devices coming in, especially the data heavy users will see a big change. In India, because of the heavy usage per user using anything between 20 to 22 GB per month, the spectrum in 4G is not that much to provide that kind of capacity for so many users,” he said, adding that the capacity being produced on 5G per GB is significantly less.