The 5G leapfrog to 6G: New technology needs a 'whole-of-govt' ecosystem

Within a few days the Union cabinet will give the go-ahead for 5G auctions. Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi has last week made clear that the government will support the roll-out of 5G as an “important step toward self-reliance in critical and modern technology”, the timelines are going to hold.

Given that, it is important now that the telecom regulator, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), the group of secretaries, the Digital Communications Commission (DDC) and the Union cabinet get the prices and the range of airwaves offered to the industry just right. India cannot transition to a position like, say the US or Korea, where the advent of every new generation of telecom services has almost obliterated the previous generation.

“It is also necessary to make the entire 5G a good business case so that telecom operators can pick the low-hanging ones immediately. It will enable them to generate additional revenues, which will motivate them to continue expanding 5G networks by making additional investments,” said telecom analyst Parag Kar.

This is because digital changes are now a big deal in India, where a lot of the country’s government-to-citizen services as well as a vast swathe of the payments business ride on technology platforms. India has the world’s second largest cohort of wireless telecom subscribers at 1.14 billion (as of March 2022).

To run this countrywide mammoth business enterprise, almost all generations of telecom services run in India. From 2G, which is essentially voice communications, to 4G. So, the ecosystem of telecom services and machines are vastly different across the 22 telecom circles into which the country is divided.

In this environment, the advent of 5G is a big deal. It can, as the prime minister pointed out, bring the best of connectivity to the villages of the country or create one more area of inequality among Indians.

5G offers data usage capacity that is multiple times that of 4G. The system drives radio signals into narrow beams, each serving an individual customer, unlike 4G where a single radio beam serves all the customers located around a base station. The efficiency of each band of spectrum, therefore, gets multiplied up to 50 times. This can remove at a stroke the niggling problem of Indian telecom architecture, which is the limited reach of broadband data services.

But that’s just a part of the potential of 5G technology. Since 5G networks can also be used to drive over-the-top (OTT) and linear TV content, it will also be necessary to harmonise the regulations driving those services with the new standards. There is, therefore, plenty of work now for several ministries and regulators.

But this requires helping the three telecom service providers — Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea — with the financial space to make the necessary investments. It also means allowing internet service providers, e-commerce companies and others access to 5G technology to develop their businesses.

In India, historical policy missteps have meant the bulk of the telecom connections are anchored around mobile broadband of erratic quality. Fibre accounts for only 3.5 per cent of total broadband subscribers.

For the rest, the download speeds are low due to bottlenecks in the last mile, both spectrum and backhaul. The average spectrum or airwaves, assigned to an Indian operator, for instance, is half of what Malaysia offers or a third of China or most European nations (see chart).

Within this limited space, Indian telecom service providers have to keep space to offer 2G (voice) services for subscribers who have not migrated to 4G. Plus at any moment, since there are a much larger number of people using mobiles at any place in India, the capacity of the telecom towers are stretched. The end result is the usual complaint — mobile data speeds are much lower than all other countries.

In this environment, it is a no-brainer that the telecom companies will want large chunks of spectrum to make their 5G services viable. As not all types of spectrum are useful to offer 5G services, it is best offered in the 3.3 Ghz to 3.6 Ghz range. But here, too, there are potential shortages given that the defence forces use some of these bands. Reliance Jio, for instance, has pitched for a band of at least 100 Mhz per operator, whereas the actuals could be close to 60 Mhz. So, if the eventual price to buy the spectrum remains high, the business case to ex¬pand 5G services will remain limited.

The critical point about the 5G network is the stability of the download speed for users. To ensure that this speed does not flag, even as a user moves between base stations or even indoors, it is necessary for the telecom companies to also offer the same services on different bandwidths. Thus, service providers need several levels of spectrum — the lower frequencies like 700 Mhz to offer some level of service, a middle-level of 3.3-3.6 Ghz and millimetre waves of 2.6 Ghz, the latter having excellent utility within a building or closed premises. The complication here is that some parts of the latter waves are also used for satellite-to-earth communications. The 5G environment, therefore, is far more dynamic and needs to be in place from all angles for the ecosystem to be prepared for 6G.

Trai has wisely suggested cutting the reserve price of 700 Mhz by 40 per cent, and also offered the millimetre waves for auction. But the DDC has kept the auction of some of the latter waves for later. It has argued that this is necessary to ensure there is no conflict of interest with the business of the low earth orbit satellite operators (such as OneWeb, in which Bharti Enterprises owns 42 per cent).

As Kar notes, the 5G systems can unlock capabilities that are not possible in a 4G system. This opens up opportunities for driving new applications and generating new revenue streams. To tap into some of these possibilities, a consortium of IITs have developed for the first time a domestic 5G Test Bed as a cost-effective test environment.

Ultimately, however, for the unlocking, regulators have to come together, develop common platforms and find solutions for better coordination. It is a “whole-of-government” approach, as Modi pointed out, where regulation is not limited to the boundaries of just one sector.