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“The adoption of 5G will be even faster than that of 4G, which was already fairly fast.” – Ignacio Contreras, Qualcomm’s director of marketing for 5G.

At the inauguration of ‘India Telecom 2022’ earlier in February 2022, Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister for Communications, Electronics & Information Technology and Railways said, “In India, the 5G network is in its final stages of development. The country is participating today in development of 6G standards, in the thought process of 6G.”1

This has generated a hope amongst Indian citizens for a brighter future, promising clear economic and lifestyle benefits. 5G aims to bring innumerable opportunities to significantly impact the Indian market. With faster speed and immensely larger capacity when compared with 4G LTE networks, it promises to be one of the fastest, robust technologies – envisioned to revolutionize life as we know it. What will this mean for our nation? How can we reimagine connectivity with 5G in India?

The eight episode of the TechSagar Emerging Tech Webinar Series focused on addressing these pertinent thoughts. An esteemed panel of industry experts drove key discussions, identified significant challenges and pondered sustainable solutions for reimagining connectivity with 5G across the country.

The panel included distinguished experts from the industry, Rakesh Kumar (R. K.) Bhatnagar, Director General, Voice of Indian Communication Technology Enterprises (VoICE), Surya Patar Munda, Vice President, Telecom, Cientra Tech Solutions with Vinayak Godse, Senior Vice President, Data Security Council of India as the Moderator.

Vinayak Godse, Senior Vice President, Data Security Council of India, reinstated the important role that tech will play in the future. He highlighted how this decade is being identified as the ‘Technology Decade’ with most discussions happening around how technology is set to redefine the coming years. Several goals and aspects of National Security are likely to be dependent on the technical abilities or the strategy of a country.

As the webinar rolled nearer to the core topic, many fascinating conversations took on the role, scope and challenges of reimagining connectivity with 5G unfolded to give rise to several key takeaways.

-5G and 4G networks can go parallelly and at the core, they can be connected if needed.

-As far as 5G related activities are concerned, IQ and free GBP are the standardization bodies of 5G technology. They are two pillars on which one can say 5G has evolved.

-In 5G, right from the initial sim card, the ID or the initial identity is not sent as it is originally; it is always concealed, unlike that in 4G.

-The Government recognizes that industries will require 5G for machine and plant automation purposes and M2M applications in their premises as robotics and smart cities are areas which demand 5G applications.

Rakesh Kumar (R. K.) Bhatnagar elaborated on the basics of deployment of 5G, the scope and challenges. He further mentioned a few areas where 5G deployment could take place namely; campus, ship and submarines, railways, technical requirements in remote areas, metros etc. He also added that 5G standards are available currently, and based on those standards, deployment around the world is taking place with India not lagging far behind. Then what are the factors that are potentially hindering the adoption and application of 5G?

“The 5G solution is not unfolding soon in the country as the spectrum is not well sorted out or because the solution is seemingly too costly.”, added panelist Surya Patar Munda. This poses as one of the biggest challenges to 5G deployment in India due to which only a few places in India can be covered and not the whole. He further added that, at present, experts are looking at solving this issue initially.

The panelists reflected on the best strategies to harness the limitless potential of 5G, and how India, equipped with today’s 4G and tomorrow’s 5G networks is on the path to empower Indian industries. The experts also attempted to look at 25 different technologies like IoT, blockchain, robotics, quantum computing etc. to comprehend India’s capabilities in each and whether they can support the vision of reimagining connectivity basis 5G.

To watch the entire conversation and discover additional takeaways, access the entire webinar recording on DSCI’s YouTube Channel here https://bit.ly/3GHhrPU 

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