India’s 5G auction plan makes telcos’ hearts sink

Picture a sleeping giant slowly waking up. That is India’s look-before-you-leap attitude in rollin

Picture a sleeping giant slowly waking up. That is India’s look-before-you-leap attitude in rolling out 5G in the country. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), in a February 2019 white paper, said the next generation #wireless technology will be “deployed in India by 2020 along with the rest of the world.”

Cut to 2022, the world’s second-largest telecom market is one of the few major countries without 5G service. Even the financially battered Sri Lanka has functioning 5G in four major cities, including Colombo, according to Ookla‘s 5G network tracker. #UnitedStates commercially rolled next generation cellular services in 2019.

Now, as the giant wakes up to auction rights for 5G spectrum bands by end of July, telecom firms are grumpy about the Union Cabinet’s decision to set aside airwaves for private enterprises. The government says sharing of 5G resources will catalyse next generation cellular adoption. Mobile operators complain their revenue will take a hit.

At the heart of of this discontent is the fourth industrial revolution driven by IoTs and machine communications. To drive machine-to-machine interactions on shop floors or mining units, industries require a stable, secure and reliable network. 5G offers that along with low latency to process real-time data.

Private wireless networks are cellular networks built specifically for individual enterprises. These networks are often deployed at a single unit, for example, a factory. They can also be used in a wide-area setting, for instance, to monitor a mine in real-time. Airports and ports can also have their own private 5G cellular network to process imaging data coming from surveillance cameras to manage the facility. Several enterprises around the world are working on setting up private 5G networks as they offer reliable, fast, and secure wireless communication.

But telcos fear that the government slicing the spectrum for private networks will eat into their revenue. Their worry stems from the fact that most use cases for 5G are related to industrial productivity than individual user communication. So, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) is of the firm view that “there is no justification whatsoever for allocating spectrum to industry verticals for operating private captive networks.”