Industry thought leadership @ India Mobile Congress 2021

India Mobile Congress 2021 started today. There was a session on industry thought leadership.

Nunzio Mirtillo, Head of Market Area South East Asia, Oceania & India, Ericsson, said that we have been working in India for a long time. Potential of 5G in India is enormous. We believe there will be 40 million 5G users in the first year itself. The enabler will be affordable spectrum. Ericsson is committed to India.

Nick McKeown, Senior VP GM, Network and Edge Group, Intel, said India is one of the largest mobile markets in the world. We can support India's digital journey. Semiconductors is the underlying technology. There are massive tailwinds behind network transformation. We are seeing the rise of the intelligent edge. There will be 75% of data being generated outside the data centers.

5G is an economic growth engine. Business case for unlocking in US is huge. KPMG believes there is $4.3 billion in value waiting to be unlocked. 5G is going to transform the landscape. 5G private networks will enterprises to develop new, low-latency apps.

AI is everywhere and stitched into every business app. 5G is driving new innovation in mobile devices. Platforms are being horizontalized. Software will further provide new developments. Cloud SPs have entered the era of heterogenous compute. Our success in the industry is dependent on collaboration.

India is one of the fastest-growing markets for digital consumers. We are now collaborating with Airtel to deploy 4G and 5G RAN. We are jointly working on AI, cloud, and edge computing. India can shift to an agile, cloud architecture in the future. Advent of 5G and buildout of intelligent edge will help India.

Resilient mobile network

Mats Granryd, Director General, GSMA, said it is clear that a resilient mobile network is necessary. Today, 1 in 3 Indians access the Internet from mobile. Government of India remains committed to become $5 trillion economy by 2025. Consumers are paying some of the lowest prices in the world. Recent announcements have boosted the Indian telecom sector. It has ensured long-term sustainability. 5G will make overall contribution of $455 billion to the Indian economy by 2040. Spectrum auction is planned for early 2022. India is also a large market for 5G smartphones.

GSMA has vision to unlock the full power of connectivity. Mobile industry will continue to invest in robust infrastructure. Mobile ecosystem has been a great enabler as we look into the future.

Nishant Batra, Chief Strategy and Technology Officer (CSTO), Nokia, talked about the technology vision for 2030. Today, every call in India touches a Nokia element somewhere in the call flow. It is no. 1 across overall carrier network vendor, RAN and core, optics, and SON. Nokia is now making 5G in India for the world.

Nokia's factory is Chennai offers an excellent vision for the factory of the future. The factory deployed India's first real-world app for Industry 4.0! We are taking this a step further at Nokia Bell-Labs with autonomous mobile robot orchestration (AMRO) in Chennai. There is multi-modal localization, intelligent decision engine, connectivity manager, and multi-fleet orchestrator in AMRO. Robots will take less time. In India, Nokia has set up a lab for robots for emergency management, agriculture, industrial automation, etc.

Nokia is accelerating and scaling to lead in 5G-Advanced, and is laying foundation for 6G. 5G-Advanced will provide new use cases and functionalities. 5G-Advanced is the bridge to the 6G era.

Dramatic transformation

Ankit Agarwal, MD, STL, added we have seen dramatic transformation over the last 25 years. About 60% of the world is now connected. It will be extremely important for India to look at revamping some of its policies for ubiquitous connectivity across the nation. We are the first Indian company to have converged wired and wireless set.

STL has emerged as the largest system integrator in India. We are partnering for rural development in various states. We also see strong investments coming in from private equity space. Optical demand continues to be very strong. ARPU will go up to Rs. 200. For 5G, India will need massive investment. Government should ensure most of the investment goes into network infrastructure, rather than spectrum. We have strong data set-up within the country. We are at the start of a decade-long investment cycle. We are excited to partner with the telecom service providers (TSPs).

Yezdi Nagporewalla, CEO Designate, KPMG, said the telecom sector has shown resilience. The government is committed to creating a healthy ecosystem. The industry will go to greater heights with 5G. It will change the connectivity landscape in India. He referred to a report launched recently.

There will be an estimated more than 600 million 5G users by 2030. The industry is now banking on eMBB apps, and low-latency communications. We estimate URLLC use cases to gain maturity over 5 years. As telcos veer toward 5G, they will adopt agile architecture. Capacity, liability, latency, etc., will be very important.