5G Rollout: A paradigm shift for Telecom Networks

The economic impact of the 5G rollout is expected to be very significant

On May 30th, 2022, the Union Minister for Communications Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw announced in parliament that India has started the groundwork for 5G spectrum auctions slated to take place later this year. All leading telecom operators are already conducting trials for their 5G networks. Once the auction is completed, commercial service is expected to be rolled out by the end of the year.

The economic impact of the 5G rollout is expected to be very significant. PwC expects that 5G rollouts would have an impact of US$ 525 billion on the world economy this year, rising to US$ 1.335 trillion in 2030. In India alone, PWC expects that the impact will rise from US$ 5 billion in 2022 to US$ 42 billion in 2030. The major sectors expected to be impacted by 5G include healthcare, smart utilities, consumer and media applications, industrial manufacturing, and financial services.

According to India Brand Equity Foundation, India’s 5G subscriptions will have 350 million subscribers by 2026, rising to 500 million subscribers the following year.

According to India Brand Equity Foundation, India’s 5G subscriptions will have 350 million subscribers by 2026, rising to 500 million subscribers the following year. This would mean that two out of five the next five years of Indian subscribers would be shifting to 5G. In order to facilitate this transition, India is expected to require over 22 million skilled professionals in the 5G-focused sectors like cloud computing, IoT, AI, and robotics.

The most significant feature of the new standard is a movement away from proprietary implementation of “radio access networks” -- a fancy term for all the hardware and software behind the mobile towers that dot our urban landscape. Traditionally, this market has been dominated by a small set of companies from Europe, Korea, and China. Geopolitical tensions over the last couple of years have highlighted the security risks of dependence on mobile infrastructure that could be tapped or otherwise tampered with. The new 5G standard addresses this risk by enabling the development of Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN) based on a new “Commercial-Off-The-Shelf” (COTS) hardware, much like assembling a PC based on a motherboard. Complementing this COTS hardware is open-source software, which provides transparency into the implementation of the network functionality. We expect that O-RAN-based access networks would enable Indian companies to compete aggressively in the network equipment vendor space.

The second major area where we will see changes in the mobile networks due to 5G is in the area of network planning. A mobile network is designed as a series of overlapping “cells”. At the center of each cell is a transmission tower. In a traditional network, all cells are homogenous, that is, the system implementing the cell is the same in all cells. This network architecture breaks down in 5G. As we saw, higher bandwidth in 5G is enabled by the new spectrum in higher frequencies (3.3 – 3.675 GHz and 24.25 – 28.5 GHz).

One way to increase the size of the cell is by deploying surfaces that can reflect mobile signals, in the same way that a mirror reflects visible light. There are a number of technical challenges in deploying these “Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces”, and researchers are working to resolve these.

While the higher frequency spectrum enables better bandwidth, it also requires higher transmit power. Since transmit power cannot be increased very much, this results in smaller cells in 5G. This will result in a massive increase in the number of mobile cells required to be deployed by an operator. One way to increase the size of the cell is by deploying surfaces that can reflect the mobile signal, in the same way that a mirror reflects visible light. There are a number of technical challenges in deploying these “Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces”, and researchers are working to resolve these.

The mobile signals are also not very good at going through concrete, as anyone who has been frustrated by poor cellular reception in a multi-storeyed building will attest. This problem is exacerbated at higher frequencies. The new standard aims to handle this by creating a new category of cells called “nano-cells”.

Nano-cells are similar to the Wi-Fi routers that dot our homes today – they provide wireless coverage over a very small area, and usually have a broadband connection to the outer world (backhaul). The new 5G network will be a mixture of regular mobile cells and the newer nano-cells, which could be deployed and removed at short notice. This will make network planning both challenging and somewhat ad-hoc. Operators will need to find new ways to handle these ever changing networks.

Indigenous development of 5G technologies to address these challenges is the need of the hour.

By Prof. Milind Gandhe

He is CEO of the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore COMET Foundation. IIITB COMET Foundation

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