India’s 5G deployment has to be tailor made to solve socio-economic problems and bridge rural-urban divide: Keysight

It is very true that 5G promises to bring immense opportunities to revolutionize our lives and also solve real-world problems. But for the Indian context, choosing on priorities, 5G in a connected car technology would rather take a back seat to applications that are more critical like taking healthcare and education to remote parts of the country or developing smart cities that can improve the standards of living.

The use cases of 5G in India is obviously need-based when compared to the use cases of developed countries. And that is why Keysight Technologies Inc signed an MoU with the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras to support the Telecom Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI) in the development of India specific 5G standards.

This MoU follows the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)’s recognition of the 5G Radio Interface Technology (RIT) introduced by TSDSI as a candidate 5G standard.

To encourage Indian startups and the telecom industry to take an early lead in 5G, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is funding a large-scale project called ‘5G Testbed’. The goal of the project is to build a testbed that closely resembles a real-world 5G deployment.

This project will create a 5G prototype and testing platform that will be developed under the guidance of more than 50 researchers and engineers based in the IIT Madras campus using equipment developed by Keysight Technologies. Keysight’s role is to build on the functionality required for testing of the new radio interface standards developed at IIT Madras.

Satish Dhanasekaran, Senior Vice President and President, Communications Solutions Group at Keysight, says that as 5G deploys, it is important that we focus on bridging the rural-urban digital divide globally. We are pleased to partner with IIT-M, TSDSI, to enable the rural use cases and standards.

Aligned with the prime minister’s vision of Atmanirbhar Barat, TSDSI’s 5G RIT improves upon the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) RIT by providing enhanced performance for ITU’s Low Mobility Large Cell (LMLC) rural use case.

Designed to make 5G technology work well in rural areas with low-speed mobility and large cells of up to 6 km radius, this indigenous technology primarily seeks to bridge the digital divide by enabling affordable 5G broadband, leveraging India’s rural optical fiber network BharatNet.

“India has a large rural population and the low mobility large cell model can really help us in becoming truly digital as a country,” said Dr. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director of Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. “Our partnership with Keysight Technologies aims at developing technologies that will fulfill the unmet needs of connecting people from every possible remote corner of India in a better way.”

According to Pamela Kumar, Director General, Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India, “5G is going to be a paradigm shift and not just a technology update or upgrade. The Low Mobility Large Cell use case is not just limited to smartphones, but various other segments like education, healthcare, smart cities, and security, which can help in the complete socio-economic development of the nation.”