Last Updated on December 14, 2021 by Anu Joy
5Gi, India’s standard developed by the Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI) will soon be incorporated into the global 5G standard—the 3GPP. The home-grown standard is set to be merged under a “compromised formula”.
It was reported that in a meeting held last week, the Telecommunication Engineering Centre (TEC) opposed the idea of new standards citing “technology fragmentation and interoperability issues”. However, as a part of a compromise arrangement between the participating organisations, the 5Gi and 3GPP 5G merger has been finally worked out. An industry executive told ETTelecom that the said arrangement could get the approval from the international standards body in the coming days.
5Gi Merger
Reports say that the new merged Release 17 is likely to be accepted this week. The merger between India’s 5Gi and the global standard 3GPP-5G is purported to be a key milestone for India. 5Gi will operate in the same spectrum as the standard 5G network. This will equip the country with high-speed and high-quality connectivity when 5G gets rolled out in India and the rest of the world.
5Gi Standards Get Massive Pushback from Telcos
Last year saw India’s homegrown 5Gi being recognised by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The 5Gi standard was the result of a collaboration between IIT Hyderabad and IIT Madras. However, when it came to adopting the standards, there was massive pushback from telecom companies. Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea were against adopting 5Gi standards, citing increase in network deployment cost. On the other hand, technology developers refuted the claims by stating that deployment would only require minor software changes.
The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) vehemently opposed the 5Gi standards and even sent a series of letters to the telecom department. The letters said that the 5Gi standards will burden telecom carriers. It added that a 5Gi mandate may also affect the consumer by driving up prices of 5G devices due to the cost of a new variant of chipset.
However, an industry expert highlighted the importance of the 5Gi merger:
“In this globalised world standardisation and interoperability is the key to driving economies of scale and faster deployment. Otherwise, you have another TDS CDMA or FOMA story, where technologies did not go anywhere due to the lack of standardisation.”
5Gi for Rural Development
One of the key features of the 5Gi standards is Low Mobility Large Cell (LMLC). It boosts the signal transmission range of a base station, which in turn expands the coverage area, even more than that covered by current technologies. 5Gi will enable telcos to provide high-speed and low-latency 5G coverage in such areas. Rural and remote areas will benefit greatly from the enhanced coverage.
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