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NEW DELHI: Nokia aims to leverage its global learnings to expedite the fifth-generation (5G) monetisation process for its Indian telecom operator customers Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, said a top executive of the Finnish telecom gear maker.
Harri Holma, Senior Advisor in Technology Office at Nokia’s Finland headquarters told ETTelecom in a virtual interview that the company is investing in India’s sixth-generation (6G) research and development efforts by establishing a lab and has forged a partnership with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, in this domain.
“Many (5G) use cases are now about to start. What we are doing here is utilise the learnings from markets like the US and Europe when working with our Indian customers in making all these things happen. That is the next step which is now starting,” Holma said.
The top two incumbent telcos, as part of monetisation, have launched their 5G fixed broadband service in key metros.
The top Nokia executive said that 5G FWA has become successful in markets such as the United States, where T-Mobile and Verizon are providing it, while the vendor’s European and Asian customers were also deploying the service.
Based on deployment experiences globally, Nokia is optimising 5G FWA for its Indian customers who are still in the “early phase of productising”.
For introducing industry-specific 5G-driven use cases such as augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR), remote health, online education, defence and security, and applications such as private networks and network slicing, Indian telcos would have to upgrade 5G radios, invest in 5G core network (or standalone architecture), and deploy more spectrum, the executive said.
While Jio has rolled out 5G with standalone (SA) architecture, Airtel has opted for the 5G nonstandalone (NSA) route, which utilises a 4G core. “The next course of action is to deploy 5G SA, and the telcos also have to make the underlying radio ready for that…rolling out sites will take time because, in India, they have 300,000 to 400,000 5G base stations,” he said.
India has 180 million 5G users, of which, 108 million are on Jio’s network and the rest 72 million on Airtel’s network, as per a recent Opensignal study.
“…private network is one area that is not utilised in India. That is one more potential area where we can work with our operator customers in India,” Holma said. The complexity of deployment is a major bottleneck for private 5G, he added, noting that enterprises in verticals such as ports and mining – the potential key customers of these dedicated networks – do not have the required competence in this area.
”So Nokia has been developing the Digital Automation Cloud. The idea is that that is substantially easier for the enterprise customers to deploy private 5G,” he said.
Pekka Rantala, Head of 6G Bridge Program at Business Finland told ETTelecom, “To be able to reap the benefits of 5G, standalone, network slicing and private networks, the key question is how does this new technology support business cases? Sometimes it might be challenging to fit the technology as per customer needs because they need to understand where they are heading.”
On contribution to India’s 6G vision, Holma said, “Bharat 6G Vision as articulated by your Prime Minister Narendra Modi. That is a great target. Our CEO Pekka Lundmark also met with PM Modi last year. Clearly, there is a high-level agreement here that we want to proceed jointly on that.”
In 2022, Nokia and its Swedish rival Ericsson won 5G equipment supply deals from Jio and Airtel. For the Finnish vendor, this is its first-ever deal with the Mukesh Ambani-led telecom carrier that has over 420 million mobile users.
“We have won 45% of the 5G radio network for Bharti Airtel and then, of course, the fact that we now have a deal with Reliance Jio as well is really significant because that is a customer where we were not in radio network business in 4G at all, our market share there was 0%,” Nokia chief executive Pekka Lundmark had said then.
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