“5G is going to largely focus on enterprise,” says Kundan Das, Parallel Wireless

Discussing the impact of the 5G revolution in India, Kundan Das, Head – Business Development and Sales APJC, Parallel Wireless asserts that while 4G and 3G which are data services that were primarily focusing on customers or consumers or individuals, 5G is something which is going to largely focus on enterprise, for example, driverless cars. Though, its’ going to support consumers also but the development of 5G technology is low latency and high speed which will be targeting to enterprise applications more.

According to him, the question remains if 5g is an access technology, for enterprise to completely shift from traditional business model more of a high capacity, high speed, low latency kind of model like taking the same example of driverless car, if you look at Indian context will be very different from the global context, it will take time because it not only depends on the availability of the network and the vehicles but it is also largely going to depend on road infrastructure, how the overall approach and acceptance or ecosystem which is around the 5G application that is going to support.

As we shift more into the enterprise section, now what we’re finding is that the concern is not only technology related or speed or even capacity. The major concern has changed largely to security. So, security remains a critical concern not only for the enterprise, operator but also largely for the government. So while looking for a solution, design and developed for a 4G-3G network, security wasn’t a big concern then. But now, to check how great a solution is, would largely depend on how secure it is. Now so far the infrastructure readiness is concerned, the good thing in India is that because of the 4G and the developments around it, the site distance has really reduced. When you are looking at the shift that is happening to the enterprise, in India if you look at it in 4G because of the capacity and coverage, the average distance of the 4G base station is closer.

Like in a city scenario it is almost like 50 meters because as per science the closer one is to the end user, better the services will be. Same goes with the network also, that’s why wifi speeds are always higher and if you put something outside like previously all the base stations were outside and now the base stations have been shifted to inside. So the loss is now not considered.  What we are also expected is that every house is going to have on base station considering the demand in which it is generated. And most of the time people are consuming data-traffic in the house—there are Netflix and Amazon which are accessed from the house. Now with that happening, we are finding is that the infrastructure both in terms of transmission as well as the passive infrastructure that is getting better. With 5G technology what is happening is that the spectrum is of very high bandwidth. So, the kind of coverage it is going to offer is lesser and that’s why one has to plan a network which is closer to the customer and at the same time there are certain frequencies which are for umbrella kind of coverage. So one will have umbrella coverage, hotspot coverage—within hotspot it will also have home coverage, so it's going to be complete hybrid or heterogeneous kind of network.

These are the things which are happening in 5G and India is definitely having an advantage particularly in the last two years, Mr Das believes. There is a lot of investment that is going both in transmission and in the passive infrastructure. And especially now as the different operators are consolidating, everyone is focusing on their investment. So these are the things in the direction of 5G.