India is towards 5G launch, and at a crucial time such as this, Vodafone Idea (Vi), Airtel, Jio and global telecom vendors such as Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, and Samsung have said that India’s 5G standards known as 5Gi should match the global standards set by the 3GPP. It will be important to set the tone of 5G’s rollout and future in India. According to an ET Telecom report, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said that the issues regarding interoperability of the 5Gi are still there. No specific advantageous differentiation has been found for using the 5Gi standard against the 5G standard of 3GPP. A senior executive from the industry said that going with local 5G standards can prove to be very costly for the telcos and might result in a delayed nationwide 5G rollout.
Jio Supports Local 5G Standards While Airtel Doesn’t
Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and MD of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) said that Jio supports the local 5G standards. However, he further said that the local standards should be flexible and adaptive to the globally set standards. Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman of Bharti Airtel said that India’s local 5G standards will push it way behind other nations and keep it out of the global ecosystem. The Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI) said that 5Gi will prove to be a ‘game changer’ for the industry. However, the industry believes that the standards set by TSDSI aren’t in line with what 3GPP has recommended and will prove to be very costly for the whole nation. TSDSI said that operators won’t have to incur any extra cost since the changes will have to be made in the software domain and not at the hardware level. The 5Gi standard recommended by the TSDSI won’t work with existing 4G networks. At the same time, it does not include any of the recommendations by the 3GPP.
