Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio Differ over 5Gi standard; TRAI to Seek Assessment

India's own 5G standard, 5Gi, has now become a matter of dispute between top two telcos Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel.

5Gi Becoming an Issue

First, a few weeks ago, Business Standard reported that Bharti Airtel was strictly against 5Gi. The telco argued that the indigenous 5G standard will increase the costs of network and mobile devices.

Further, the telco claimed that it will also “seriously impact” the interoperability between networks based on two different network technologies. The telco has maintained its stance of having just the 3GPP implemented in India.

Reliance Jio, on the other hand, said it supports any indigenous technology, given that it does not compromise on the network quality and increase costs.

The contradictory opinions have forced TRAI to direct COAI to make a presentation regarding 5Gi. The regulatory authority has asked the industry body to point out the pros and cons of the standard. Also, TRAI has directed COAI to check how acceptable the standard is by telcos and OEMs.

These developments followed soon after DoT cleared the much-awaited 5G trials last week. The same allowed 13 total applications that seek to partner non-Chinese gear vendors to work on developing use cases relevant for India on 5G. The trials will take six months, which is subject to performance of the trials.

5Gi's Current Situation

Voice&Data recently reported on 5Gi, stating that its implementation relies solely on how capable the standard is in the Indian situation.

The government is pushing telcos to run tests on 5Gi. One of the key reasons of that is that TSDSI claims that the local standard is capable of providing broadband connectivity in rural areas using ultra-long-range cell sites.

However, a draft presentation made by COAI for TRAI mentions that the TSDSI has not yet shown if 5Gi is an improvement over 3GPP standards in rural India. The draft also said that 3GPP based 5G has already improved coverage in rural US.

5Gi's performance has also become a matter of contention for the two rival telcos. Reliance Jio has claimed that TSDSI already showed ITU that India's 5G standard is better than 3GPP. However, at the same time Airtel execs counter that point. They said that 3GPP's performance data Jio is referring to is in the public domain. Further, they said that Reliance Jio should provide references for its arguments.