NEW DELHI: Vodafone ideaIndia’s chief technology officer Jagbir Singh said India could emerge as a formidable player in telecom technology, especially around 5G and 6G due to its software prowess.
“If we can be the leader in the software, then we can do it in 5G and 6G domains because all technologies revolve around the software. I am sure that one day we will be the leaders, but we have to be patient. No country has quickly become a leader in any technology. It is a 5 to 10 year cycle for technologies to mature,” Singh told ET, adding that with government support, the country will be on par with global companies in the coming years.
In India, Jio Platforms and Tata Consulting Services (TCS)-CDoT combination have developed their respective end-to-end telecom stacks. While Jio’s stack is around 5G, TCS-CDoT’s stack is currently for 4G, which will be deployed by BSNL.
Singh also questioned the maturity and stability of OpenRAN technology and said the technology has not been widely deployed by telecom operators worldwide. The reason, he said, that promised capex benefits are not there is along with the stability of the technology.
The director said that too many vendors and system integrators add to the complexity of the OpenRAN, which needs to be solved.
“But I think it’s a good initiative and we need to keep working on it to ensure it becomes successful in the future and benefits operators and consumers through automation, scalability, flexibility and agility,” he said. adding that the industry have to keep working on it.
Vodafone Idea had tested the OpenRAN technology with Mavneir for its 4G network and is now looking to expand the partnership for its 5G network.
Its bigger rival Bharti Airtel also recently warned of maturity and cost-related challenges associated with the OpenRAN technology, but said it will be part of its live 5G network by the end of fiscal year 2023.
There are already Airtel’s OpenRAN-related contracts with several partners. “We are a technology company that uses technology to provide services. So the readiness of OpenRAN to serve on a larger scale will happen by the end of 2023 as we want the total cost of ownership to come down,” Randeep Sekhon, chief technology officer at Bharti Airtel, recently told ET.
Vodafone Idea’s Singh said cloudification of core and edge networks will become prominent in India. He added that artificial intelligence and machine learning along with data analytics will move to the edge cloud, improving the overall customer experience.
He also said that 5G is a technology par excellence to help enterprises in the country and will enable a plethora of use cases. “The entire industry is collaborating to find use cases around the IoT, M2M and real-time applications in healthcare, education and gaming. 5G is the right platform and technology to support all of these use cases.”