Homegrown 5G standard risky, may hurt India biz: Telcos to DoT

Vodafone Idea Ltd. (VIL), Bharti Airtel, Qualcomm and other leading global network vendors have told the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) that the indigenous 5G standard, 5Gi, is a high-risk technology that will set off mass device hardware changes, increase roll out and 5G smartphone overheads, throw interoperability challenges, and ultimately undermine the 5G business case in the country.

In a joint submission, industry players such as VIL, Bharti Airtel, Huawei, Samsung, Intel, Mavenir, Ericsson, Nokia, NEC, Qualcomm, ZTE, Mediatek, and Altiostar have appealed to DoT's technical wing, Telecom Engineering Centre (TEC), to conduct a theoretical verification as well as field-level substantiation of performance gains of the proposed 5Gi standard before making it obligatory for 5G deployments in India.

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"There are no clear established gains of 5Gi, which are practically validated," the companies stated in their submission, the Economic Times reported.

The DoT had invited industry opinions on a homegrown telecom standards body, Telecom Standards Development Society, India's (TSDSI) view that 5Gi be made the national standard for establishing 5G networks in the country.

Many telcos, global network vendors, and chipset makers are of the opinion that India focused 5G specification suggested by TSDSI doesn't harmonise with global standards supported by the 3GPP (the 3rd Generation Partnership Project).

The telcos, chipset makers, and vendors also told DoT in their submission that it's well founded that the 3GPP 5G radio (standard), as well as the one based on 5Gi, are "non-interoperable", which means that any 5G-enabled handset contingent on 3GPP-5G standards won't be compatible with 5Gi-based infrastructure and vice versa.

However, the TSDSI firmly rebuts the claims of industry players.

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