Telcos, Vendors Call 5Gi "Risky"; Ask for Unbiased Assessment by DoT

Telcos such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, along with top telecom gear makers and vendors have called 5Gi a "risky" technology. The companies have said that they need an objective assessment of the homemade standard, a demand which was rejected previously.

Telecom Sector Wary of 5Gi

In their joint submission to the DoT, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, NEC, Nokia, Qualcomm, Samsung, ZTE, Altiostar, Mavenir and Mediatek urged the TEC to conduct theoretical verification and field level validation of performance gains of the standard. The companies said, "unfortunately, there are no clear established gains of the same, which are practically validated".

The companies added that the fundamental premise for diverging from the global standards should be based in major improvements. However, "any of these performance gains are yet to be proven on a commercial scale", the companies said.

Per multiple reports, the DoT has been looking to make it mandatory for 5G deployment in India. Incidentally, the Telecom Department had called on the industry to comment on 5Gi adoption by TEC.

The private telecom companies said that the draft TEC standard, also named 5Gi, builds itself upon the 3GPP Rel-15 5G NR specifications for the most part, albeit using an older-version of the latter.

“This is because the TSDSI 5Gi is completely leaning on the specifications developed by 3GPP for its foundational aspects, over which TSDSI made unilateral technical modifications leaving it incompatible with the foundation specifications,” they said.

"5Gi Non Interoperable with 3GPP"

The companies also went on to express worry over the non-interoperability of the local standard with the global standard. This implies that handsets using 5Gi standard can't use 3GPP based networks and vice-versa.

This will also disrupt international roaming, for both Indian and Foreign subscribers. As the two will have different set of standards, none of then can operate while outside of their territories. The situation will worsen for 5Gi-based smartphones; 3GPP based 5G has been deployed in more than 150 countries.

If the government ends up mandating 5Gi, it will also drive handsets costs up. Implementation of 5Gi will require hardware changes, and this will not only cause delays, but also increase manufacturing costs.

“It would also lead to delays in availability of such 5Gi based skews as the OEMs would have to re-design and establish separate production lines for these new skews. Overall, it would lead to delays and higher cost, which is contrary to the objectives of driving down the cost of 5G for consumers in India,” they added.

“Non interoperability between 5Gi and 3GPP will necessitate the need for a dedicated licensed spectrum for both technologies. This would call for additional investment from operators, those who wish to deploy 5Gi and 3GPP,” private players said.

“Forward compatibility is an essential aspect to any specification evolution process. There is no scope of future releases and new features of 3GPP releases to be added into 5Gi without breaking compatibility with any product (e.g., network, device, test-equipment) based on current local standard release.

Telcos have also claimed that 5Gi will not enable them to deploy Dynamic Spectrum Sharing to use same band for both 4G and 5G radios; this makes their 5G service unsustainable.

5Gi and Ambiguity

The companies, in their submission, warned the DoT of the lack of completeness and ambiguity still present in 5Gi's specifications. They said that this will ultimately lead to failure of successful commercialization of the standard. This will also lead to a lesser interest generated in the standard, making it commercially unviable.

Many expect that the TEC should ensure that the national standard it creates are complete, error-free, and implementable for the creation of a meaningful ecosystem & seamless deployment of telecom networks, they added.

The evolution of the Indian standard has inevitable dependence on a small group of members within TSDSI, the companies added. They added that the local standard has tight dependence on the future 3GPP specifications which is a matter of concern.

“Therefore, with specifications that are limited by a pre Rel-15 version from the 3GPP, there is no guarantee nor confidence with industry that it would seamlessly keep evolving. Neither is interoperability possible with the 3GPP standards,” they added.

Explaining implications, companies said that in the current form, the current draft specification cannot evolve further without breaking backward compatibility with the products if built based on the 5Gi specifications.