Locally developed 5G standard risky, telcos to DoT

Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea (Vi), Qualcomm and top global network vendors have told the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) that the home-grown 5G standard, 5Gi, is a risky technology that will trigger mass device hardware changes, jack up roll out and 5G smartphone costs, pose interoperability challenges, and eventually, hurt the 5G business case in India.

In a joint submission, the likes of Bharti Airtel, Vi, Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, NEC, Nokia,Qualcomm, Samsung, ZTE, Altiostar, Mavenir and Mediatek have urged DoT’s technical wing, Telecom Engineering Centre (TEC), to run a theoretical verification and field-level validation of performance gains of the proposed 5Gi standard before making it mandatory for 5G deployments in India.

“There are no clear established gains of 5Gi, which are practically validated,” the companies said in their submission. The DoT had sought industry views on a local telecom standards body, Telecom Standards Development Society, India’s (TSDSI) suggestion that 5Gi be made the national standard for deploying 5G networks in India.