Cloud computing, virtual networks, fibre rollout to check call drops: HCL

Cloud computing-based telecom network with virtualisation of its various elements and rollout of optical fibre network closer to homes will be able to help solve call drop problem, HCL officer said

Cloud computing-based telecom network with virtualization of its various elements and rollout of optical fibre network closer to the homes will be able to help solve call drop problem in India, a senior HCL Technologies officer said here.

While speaking with PTI at the Mobile World Congress, HCL Tech Chief Technology Officer Kalyan Kumar said that post-pandemic, demand for data has jumped significantly high and telecom operators are gradually moving towards cloud computing systems to manage capacity in the network.

"Fiber infrastructure going pretty much as close to the home, cloudification of the telco and virtualization of the network. These are the three things that will solve the call drop problem. We cannot solve the problem by just addressing one point," he said.

Taking a serious note of call drop-related complaints and service quality issues, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India last week directed telecom service providers to submit service quality reports for each State and Union Territory. Telecom companies will have to report more granular data that will help identify patchy networks and problem areas upfront.

According to the Nokia Mobile Broadband Index (MBiT) report, mobile data traffic in India has risen 3.2 times over the last five years.

The average data consumption per user has risen sharply from 9.7 GB in 2018, reaching 19.5 GB per user per month in 2022.

"Is the telco network fully softwarised? The answer is no. Telcos are partially softwarised. They are not fully cloudified. If they become fully cloudified and softwarised, they can then plan for capacity based on commodity hardware. Codification is the foundation to help solve call drop problem," Kumar said.

He said that shifting networks to cloud computing systems gives telecom operators visibility on the demand along with elasticity, flexibility, scalability and interoperability to adjust networks as per the demand.

"I think that demand is outshooting the supply. That's why this whole telco cloud is becoming very important because in cloud you can add data center edge, virtualize and softwarise and you can add compute nodes," Kumar said.

HCL Tech has enhanced its focus on 5G networks with the launch of 5G System Integration Framework to enable operators of public and private 5G to seamlessly deploy and integrate critical components of a future-ready network. It has also announced CloudSMART Modernization Experience and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) technology platforms.

Kumar said the company is bullish on cloud adoption by telecom operators. The company has announced collaboration with Dell Technologies to provide network modernization solutions to communication service providers and enterprises.

Under the collaboration, HCLTech will provide end-to-end system integration services for vRAN (virtualized radio access networks), ORAN (open radio access networks), private 5G networks and multi-access edge computing deployments, including telecom network transformation, design, interoperability, optimization and managed services.