5G & the Future of Mobile Data

During the recently held TLF5G Conference by Voice&Data, held in New Delhi in September 2022, Shyam Prabhakar Mardikar, President, Group CTO, Mobility, Reliance Jio, presented on 5G and how it is redefining communications. Spectrum is just one add-on. 5G is going to change everything that we do. Smartphones are now an integral part of the human anatomy. More and more machines will use massive connectivity and compute. Industry 4.0 has become a key buzzword. Industry verticals across all sectors will need digital workflows, robotics, and automated control systems. We will have three Vs – voice, video, and virtuality. We will have connected devices, machines, and industries.

5G is beyond more of the same. We are much beyond adding new spectrum. We will have hyper-connectivity, hyper compute, and hyper storage. We are creating multiple networks for multiple use cases. Next, programmability would be native to 5G. We will have 5G intelligent core, native security, and evolving intelligence. Elasticity of architecture is another major point. We will need to bring assets closer to the customer. We will have embedded compute, and device, user, and control. We will do self-learning through big data, and have hyper performance. The network will start adapting to the customer, to the use case, etc. India will need hyper performance in future. We need to unlearn to learn! We need to have disaggregation, open interfaces, virtualization, augmented intelligence, and modular deployment. India deserves network densification and scale. We need AI/ML to enhance performance. We will also have converging industries. Overlap in processes and skills will be there. We will share digital platforms. We will also have domain automation and AI. We need to understand and collaborate to go digital.