What Have the Telcos been up to in the 5G Trials So Far?

Almost every one of us have heard of 5G, and have read, heard, or seen the word plastered all over the internet. And India has it no different; 5G has captured the country's imagination like no other generation before. So, with the 5G trials well underway, all eyes are on the Big Three of the Indian telecom industry.

One thing's for sure; the industry is enthusiastic about 5G and what it can do.

Reliance Jio - Developing Use Cases

It seems like that the largest telco in the country has been putting in the most hours for 5G. A month after the government approved its 5G trials application, the telco had a locally-developed full stack for 5G. It has managed to do that, partnering with Qualcomm. The companies have developed an open and interoperable interface-compliant architecture-based 5G solution with vRAN.

The telco's trial 5G network has been live in Navi Mumbai since 15th June (Airtel did beat it to the punch by a day, though). Since then, Jio has been working to develop new use cases for both Indian market and abroad.

As such, September has seen a string of developments from Jio's 5G Trials network.

First, on 23rd September, the telco announced that it had tested immersive HD VR meeting using its indigenously-developed 5G NR and Core. Jio had made use of eMBB and low-latency, enabled by 5G. Then, on 28th September, Jio said that it has also tested an AI-based multimedia chatbot using its 5G NR and Core. This came as another one of enterprise-oriented use cases, after the VR meetings solutions.

On 1st October, Reliance Jio announced trialing the most important use case of 5G - Voice and Messaging over 5G VoNR. Basically, the telco has managed to successfully deliver voice and messaging services over its 5G network. What's more, Reliance Jio SVP Sanjay Bhatnagar had said that the telco has also tested the interoperability of 4G VoLTE and 5G VoNR.

So far, Jio is leading the pack.

Bharti Airtel - Taking 5G Far and Wide

Airtel has the distinction of having booted up India's first 5G Trials network, when it switched on its network in Gurugram's Cyber Hub on 14th June. Since then, it has also partnered with Nokia to launch another 5G network in Mumbai.

Airtel also has a 5G deal with Intel - the latter will supply crucial network silicon and solutions. And alongside Intel, Airtel's 5G networks are powered by Ericsson in Gurugram and Nokia in Mumbai.

So, what has the telco been up to so far with its 5G networks?

At a press briefing early last month, Airtel said that it had successfully demonstrated cloud gaming on mobile devices over its 5G network in Manesar, Gurugram. The telco had partnered with two professional gamers, and had demonstrated the network's high-speed and low-latency capabilities. For Airtel, it is a typical “why not” situation; the telco is already building data centers, and it will help Airtel better monetize that asset.

In early October, the telco announced that it had partnered with Ericsson to trial 5G in a rural area; the telco became the first operator to do so. Airtel and Ericsson demonstrated the 5G network in a village on the outskirts of Delhi/NCR called Bhaipur Bramanan.

In a joint statements, the companies talked about the test. "The highlight of the trial was the demonstration of over 200 Mbps throughput on 3GPP-compliant 5G FWA device at distance of over 10 Km from the site. This translated into an inter-site coverage of approximately 20 kms, thus offering the ability to provide coverage even in the remotest of geographies. As part of the trial, even a commercially available 3GPP-based 5G smartphone was able to connect to the 5G test network and record 100+ Mbps speeds at a distance of over 10 km", they said.

Needless to say that Airtel has come all guns blazing to the 5G trials; Airtel CTO Randeep Sekhon said that the telco can roll out commercial 5G within two quarters of the 5G spectrum auction.

Vodafone Idea - Fastest 5G in the Nation

For Vodafone Idea, the last few months have been torrid to say the least. Hence, it has not focused on 5G as much as it would have hoped to. Mounting debts and long-term payments obligations had seen the telco look almost on the verge of going down. Since then, though, Vi has managed to rally a bit, after the government announced a string of sector reforms.

However, on 19th September, the telco had announced that at its trials in Pune and Gandhinagar, in Maharashtra and Gujarat, respectively, the telco had achieved 1.5 Gbps downlink; it had used the experimental mid-band spectrum which the DoT allocated to the telcos.

Vi achieved a real breakthrough when, using the coveted mmWave spectrum, it recorded a staggering peak speed of 3.7 Gbps. Although this was done in a 5G lab, the achievement means that the telco has the fastest 5G in India. Vodafone Idea said that it had used 5G NSA network architecture and NR Radios.

Jagbir Singh, CTO, Vodafone Idea Limited, said that the people at the telco were "pleased with the speed and latency results in the initial stages of the 5G trials".

This was the first round of 5G trials for the telco, and it has some ground to cover; Jio and Airtel have already moved to field trials. What's more, Vodafone Idea has only till November to ramp up its testing.

When Will 5G in India Actually Arrive?

Unfortunately, it is looking more and more likely that it will come later rather than sooner. For all the 5G enthusiasts out there this might be bad news.

The government has been mulling over a plan to figure out when to conduct the much-awaited 5G spectrum sale. The new telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had said on the 15th September that the government will create an auction calendar, in order to streamline the whole process.

However, right now, DoT has a lot of work pending backstage before it can set the stage.

It has to ask for recommendations to TRAI, then TRAI will move with the consultations from the sector stakeholders, then it will send the said recommendations to the DCC for approval. After approvals and modifications, TRAI will then send those recommendations to the Cabinet for approval. At last, after what will take about a year, DoT will invite applications for the spectrum sale.

If we assume that everything will take a year, and then add the Airtel CTO's comments in the mix, we are looking at a commercial 5G rollout in 2023-24. Till then, let's sit back and dream.