Ericsson inks 5G pact with BSNL

Telecom gear maker Ericsson said Wednesday it will sign an agreement with telecom PSU BSNL for developing a roadmap and working on use cases of 5G technology in areas like agriculture and education, especially for rural areas.

The Swedish company has a similar pact with telecom giant Bharti Airtel.

As part of the agreement, the two parties will also collaborate for knowledge sharing on 5G technology concepts and industry trends as well as work on 3GPP standardisation progress.

The partnership will leverage Ericsson's 5G Centre of Excellence at IIT Delhi to engage in evaluating benefits of 5G technology in areas like rural connectivity, connected healthcare and agriculture among others, Nitin Bansal, MD India and Head of Network Solutions (South East Asia, Oceania and India) at Ericsson, told reporters here.

This announcement reinforces Ericsson's commitment to bring the latest technology innovations to India and develop the 5G ecosystem to support a digital India, he added.

"As networks evolve towards 5G, we have the products and solutions as well as the expertise to help operators evolve seamlessly from 4G to 5G," he said.

BSNL CMD Anupam Shrivastava said 5G will play an important role in delivery of 'Digital India' initiatives.

"5G and Internet of Things (IoT) will enable new opportunities and create new ecosystems and through this association with Ericsson, we intend to take the lead in the development of these new technologies," he said.

He added that the company will test, learn and develop use cases that will help it meet the diverse needs of its customers in the future.

According to a report by Ericsson, 5G-enabled digitisation revenue potential in India is estimated to be over USD 27 billion by 2026.

Also, the Indian operators can generate additional revenue of USD 13 billion if they take up roles beyond connectivity and become service enablers, it added.

Some use cases of 5G technology include industrial control and automation, autonomous driving, safety and traffic efficiency services and others.

Ericsson will showcase some 5G use cases at the India Mobile Congress 2018 Thursday. These 5G use cases, it said, have been developed with partners leveraging its Centre of Excellence.

Ericsson is working with telecom operators across the world to make 5G real. Here in India, we are already working towards creating a robust ecosystem to fast track 5G deployments," Bansal said.

He added that Ericsson has collaborated with Indian telecom operators, other industry players and academia to bring these use cases to life.

As per Ericsson Mobility Report, India will have about 10 million 5G subscriptions by 2023. The monthly data usage per smartphone in India, by then, is also forecast to increase to 13.7 GB from 5.7 GB in 2017.

The roll out of 5G networks will help address this massive growth in data traffic by enabling enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB). Studies indicate that eMBB enabled by 5G will help telecom operators reduce the cost/GB by nearly 10 times compared to 4G networks.

Ericsson said it is bringing in a slew of solutions to help operators tap into the 5G wave.