Technical difficulties in implementing 5G in India 

Introduction:

Nowadays we see a lot of 5G phones in the market. Of course, the world is moving towards 5G. In this blog, I'll be covering all the technical difficulties in implementing 5G in India. Do subscribe if you are new here and share it with your friends.

According to reports, 

• 2G was deployed globally in 1991 but was deployed in India in 1995. 
• 3G was deployed globally in 1998 but in India, ten years later. 
• 4G services were deployed in India seven years after their global launching in 2008. 

India would only witness 5G deployment at the end of 2022 or early 2023, which will also be partial. What are the different technical difficulties in implementing 5G in India? 

Types of 5G network technologies:

• Millimeter-wave
• Sub 6 GHz.

Millimeter-wave:

Smartphones transmit voice and data over the air using electromagnetic radio frequencies. These frequencies are organized into different frequency bands. Some of these frequency bands have more capacity than others and can deliver information faster in mm-wave.

Millimeter-wave 5G networks are ultra-fast, but they're also ultra-short range. To use mm-wave technology, you need to be within a block of a 5G tower, which isn't feasible in suburban and rural areas.

Millimeter-wave spectrum is also blocked by doors, windows, trees, and walls, further limiting its available range and because it requires so many towers for coverage, it is also expensive for carriers to deploy. MM-wave refers to higher frequency bands ranging from 24GHz to 40GHz

Sub 6 GHz:

In sub 6 GHz the range is large and the cost of implementation is also lower than mm-wave, but the speeds are not comparable. Sub-6 GHz refers to mid and low-frequency bands under 6GHz. Low-frequency bands are under 1GHz, while mid-bands range from 3.4GHz to 6GHz.

Data speeds on various bands:

Low-band spectrum – Peak speeds up to 100Mbps

Mid-band spectrum – Peak speeds up to 1Gbps

High-band spectrum – Peak speeds up to 10Gbps

Why 5G?

When 4G was deployed, initially the speeds were excellent. But as the user base started to grow, the speeds got reduced as the users got increased.

This is called as bandwidth saturation.

As of January 2021, there were 4.66 billion active internet users worldwide - 59.5 percent of the global population. Of this total, 92.6 percent (4.32 billion) accessed the internet via mobile devices. The search engine major Google has already confirmed that the smartphone user base has surpassed the desktop userbase. The main aim of 5G is to fix the bandwidth saturation. In simpler terms, 4G is like a normal highway whereas 5G is like Germany’s Autobahn.

Problems involved in the implementation of 5G:

Lack of regulatory bodies:

There have been huge improvements in providing mobile networks over the last decade. The telecom sector in India missed good chances in formulating a uniform broadband strategy for India. 5G needs a proper strategy for its implementation and with a lack of regulatory bodies, it seems impossible for India to achieve it in near future. 

5G implementation in India will not be in reality until a proper regulatory body will develop the roadmap for 5G in India. Telecom operators Jio and Airtel claim that they are ready for 5G deployment.

But the spectrum auctions in India has been postponed until 2022.

Solution:

India’s telecom sector is greatly affected by procedural delays and their multiple issues. So they need to formulate a uniform broadband strategy for India. Procedural delays must be cut down to implement 5G as soon as possible. This uniform broadband strategy will also help in implementing the future networks

Lack of fibre infrastructure:

Optical Fibre plays a key role in the implementation of a new generation network. For the implementation of 5G in India, Fibre plays an imminent role. It plays a key role in delivering increased data capacity and improve voice calling quality. 

Due to lack of fibre infrastructure, India faces poor quality of service and call drop issues which indicate towards country’s low investment in fibre infrastructure.

Only 20% of towers in India are backhauled with fibre technology compared with 80% in countries like the US, China, and Korea. 

Solution:

According to a recent report, India only deploys an average of 15 million kilometres of Fibre every year compared to the current demand of at least 50 million Kilometers. Optical fibre is expensive when compared to conventional methods. But it plays a vital role in the implementation of 5G in India.

Last-mile connectivity:

Since India lacks Fibre infrastructure, it has affected the Last-mile connectivity as well. Last-mile connectivity means getting good signal strength even in rural areas and villages. 

Although, projects like the “National Optical Fiber Network” (NOFN) was initialised to improve the last mile connectivity in all the 2,50,000 Gram panchayats and made their mark to improve connectivity in rural and suburban parts of India. The implementation of 5G in rural areas is still going to require at least another 10 years.

Solution:

The regulatory bodies should deploy more sustainable projects like NOFN that will adhere to last-mile connectivity and improve the connectivity in rural areas

Network security and privacy:

Even in the early 80’s era, 1G networks saw wireless channels for illegal cloning and masquerading. As networks evolve further, there are imminent attacks often on user data. Location data can also be leaked by access point selection algorithms in 5G mobile networks. 

On the other hand, data collection is another major concern for 5G users, practically all mobile applications demand user’s personal information during or before installation. Application developers rarely denote how and where they store that data and what they will use it for.

Ever since cloud-based data storage has no physical boundaries, it is prevalent that the 5G operator cannot safeguard user data in the cloud environment.

Solution:

More protection layers should be created by the telecom operators to protect the user’s data.

Users data must be stored in encrypted form. New security layers are added every day by operators to improve security.

Difficulties in implementing 5G on the consumer front

Cost of smartphone:

5G speeds can be feasible to the user only when he has a handset that supports 5G. The starting price of 5G handsets today is 25K. There are 5G phones below that price, but they do not support multi-mode 5G (mmWave and sub 6 GHz). It will take at least another 2 years to get 5G phones in the budget segment.

Cost of data:

Whenever a new piece of technology comes in, it is expensive. Similar to that, since 5G uses higher bands, the tariff plans won’t be cheap. It will remain expensive. But as the user base of 5G starts to grow gradually the tariff prices will be reduced. 

Advantages of 5G:

• The core idea behind 5G is to minimise latency.
• Cloud gaming platforms like Google stadia will greatly benefit from the minimal latency. Because in cloud gaming the input to output latency is high.
• IoT - Internet of things. Data transfer between IoT devices in our home, office or in our works space will become a lot faster.
• Public safety and infrastructure.
• Autonomous vehicles
• Manufacturing

Conclusion:

In this blog, I have tried to explain the problems for the deployment of 5G in India, its solutions, applications, and its future scope. 5G will transform the current network architecture of India into a new level and it will help in raising the economic level of India as well as it will help India to improve its ranking in Internet speed.

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