A Middle Ground - 5Gi to Merge with Global 5G Standards

In the aftermath of DoT's and TEC's opposing ideas, the telecom bodies will look to merge 5Gi, India's homemade 5G standard, with 3GPP's global 5G standard under a "compromised formula".

Government Relaxes on 5Gi

According to a person familiar with the matter, the Telecommunications Engineering Center opposed the local standard because of issues; the TEC argued that 5Gi causes interoperability and technology fragmentation. Notably, the merger will happen as the Release 17 by 3GPP; the global body will accept the merger this week. "In a meeting last week, the engineering center opposed the idea of new standards due to technology fragmentation and interoperability issues. Now, the 5Gi and 3GPP 5G merger, as a part of compromise arrangement, has been worked out which is likely to get a go-ahead from the international standards body", the person said.

Incidentally, Qualcomm has been leading the merger initiative. 5Gi has been a matter of intense debate from gear makers and telcos alike. All of the stakeholders involved have almost universally opposed the idea of a different standard than the global one. The opposition has been led by multinational vendors such as Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei and the COAI, the group that represents Jio, Airtel, and Vi. The local standard represents India’s first ITU-approved standard. Developed by TSDSI, along with IITs and other academic institutions across the country, the standard specializes in rural applications.

Therefore, it makes 5Gi a very India-specific telecommunications standard. As such, the government has been very keen on the local standard and its adoption in the telecom industry. The DoT even asked the telcos to run trials using 5Gi in the ongoing 5G trials. However, the telcos have called the standard “risky”. Vodafone Idea was the only telco to consider running 5G trials with the local standard, but so far, no one has run any successful trial.

Opposition for 5Gi

The main reason for opposition has been the lack of clarity on the standard from TSDSI. In August, the telcos and gear makers warned the DoT of the lack of completeness and ambiguity 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.

Along with Indian industry bodies, several bodies from the UK and the US have opposed the mandatory 5Gi adoption; they said that this move can set vital work shared on supply chains back. The bodies also said that alternative RANs such as Open RAN also rely on global standards; forcing 5Gi can make Open RAN adoption impossible.

In a joint letter to the DoT in August, the trade bodies said, “as TEC considers incorporation of 5Gi as a national standard, we hope that it will also consider the importance of globally harmonized standards for 5G to the success of India’ ICT ecosystem. We also ask that, whatever standards are adopted, that the Department of Telecommunications avoid making the use of any one standard mandatory and allow telecommunications service providers to deploy technologies conforming to the standards of their choice”.

Contention Between the Industry and TSDSI

In August, the telcos and vendors wrote to the DoT, telling that the 3GPP and 5Gi standards were “non-interoperable”. Later, in November, COAI had written to TRAI to make the local standard a part of the global standard. In the letter, COAI DG had said, “chipsets for 5Gi are yet to be developed and even if vendors agree to develop those, it will take one to three years to develop them, and that too at a very high cost as these will be used only in India given that the standard is not globally harmonized, hence not accepted by any other country”.

Talking about the issues that might cause, he added, “this may put the consumer at a burden if sufficient options are not available for device procurement as the operators will also have to undergo additional constraints in validating technologies that are uncommon”. Lt. Gen. Kochar also added that since no devices run the 5Gi standards, telcos can’t conduct tests for the same.

On its part, the TSDSI has refuted the telcos’ claims. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, IIT Madras, and former chairperson, TSDSI, said, “5G handsets require only minor firmware and software changes to become 5G+5Gi handsets, which will not lead to an increase in costs as confirmed by some handset solution providers and operators”. He further added, “given the scale of the Indian market in terms of the number of (mobile) connections and growth rate, the initial development cost of making these modifications is modest as it will get amortized very quickly”.

The telcos also argue that the global standards will allow economies of scale, bringing down gear costs. 5Gi won’t allow for the same and hence increase 5G prices.

How the Merger Sorts Out Problems with 5Gi

The local standard has been one of the government's initiatives towards "AtmaNirbhar Bharat". With a local standard, India's 5G network will become a unique 5G experience for the people. However, since its acceptance by 3GPP in November 2020, 5Gi has seen great opposition from the industry.

The TSDSI has claimed that 5Gi will have better range than normal 5G networks, but that's it. So far, TSDSI has provided no other incentives of installing 5Gi across the network in India.

The merger solves two of the most critical issues with 5Gi; it removes the non-interoperability, and the technology fragmentation. With a merged, hybrid network standard, 5Gi becomes compatible with 3GPP, and therefore, it solves the other problems that might have risen from the implementation. Since the telcos argued telecom gear becomes more expensive with 5Gi, a successful merger brings economies of scale back to the equation.

An India-specific 5G standard seems like the next logical step and there are obvious incentives in this situation. Countries with similar conditions to India’s might also see benefit in a big cell size standard. 5Gi supports key technology such as NBIoT and URLLC; both of them are crucial for the IoT industry in the country. The nation’s 5G network requires a solid foundation in a carefully-chosen standard. Government's push for 5Gi might seem a good move, however, cutting off India's network from the global network will not only make 5G expensive, it will also put off almost everyone to work on it.