By Anamika Sahu, Editor-in-Chief

The future will be 5G driven. This technology is almost 100 times faster than 4G and hence is creating never-before-seen opportunities for people and businesses. Designed to increase speed, reduce latency and improve the flexibility of wireless services, 5G is going to drive the future of technology. However, like every other technology in making, 5G also has its own set of challenges, opportunities, and scope.

But what are they? How is it going to impact every industry and drive betterment? Apart from these, monetization of 5G is another crucial question looming for the telecom industry. I spoke to Muralikrishnan Gopalakrishnan to discuss every aspect of 5G. Muralikrishnan is the CEO of Ramaiah Evolute and the Founder CEO of SoundingBoard Business Solutions. He had been associated with Tata Elxsi as its VP and Head, Communications Division, and with Sasken Network Engineering as its COO. He holds nearly three decades of association with the semiconductors, embedded software, and communications products and services industry.

Anamika: 5G is still in its making (implementation). But how much are we prepared for the 5G revolution globally?

Murali: Globally, we have about 800 telecom service providers or wireless service providers out of which about 150 claims that they have already rolled out or already started rolling out 5G. But the truth is, no operator in the world has really completely rolled out 5G. I guess that the situation is a little hyped, because many of these operators also call the advanced 4G version, the LTE advanced version, as 5G, which is really not 5G. Though it gives about 1 Gbps bandwidth, it is part of the 4G standard, not the 5G. But I guess for marketing, it’s called 5G by some people, however, I am not very sure what the true numbers claiming to have rolled out 5G are. Few companies/providers in the US, Japan, and South Korea have started rolling out 5G, but this is happening in batches, mostly urban areas.

The other part of the 5G story is the handsets. There are only a few handsets with 5G capability, and are very high-end phones but are yet to penetrate the lower end of the spectrum. Until and unless it becomes affordable, taking advantage of the full rollout of 5G will remain partial.

Anamika: What are some of the challenges and opportunities that you foresee in the 5G industry, globally and India? 

Murali: Let us look at it in a general way and understand the advantages 5G provides over 4G technology. The first is speed. Every generation of wireless technology, right from 2G, 3G, 4G to 5G, has provided better speed and connectivity at affordable prices. 5G is expected to provide a multi-fold speed benefit than 4G, but this seems to be a theoretical limit.

The second is that 5G can support more subscribers or devices per unit area, typically 100 times more than the 4G technology. LTEs are much larger in terms of support and can help in the growth and implementation of smart, connected (IoT) devices. Now consider a factory. There may be a million devices inside the factory which may be connected to 5G. Hence even a dense device population can reap the benefit of 5G without any latency or delay. Going forward, all our devices may be connected to IoT, including the household devices like microwaves, air conditioners, refrigerators, dishwashers, and others. This will increase the magnitude of the devices and hence would need better internet connectivity that 5G can provide thus pushing the demand multifold.

Spectrum efficiency is the next advantage that 5G brings to the fore. As the technology packs more bits and bytes into every hertz of a spectrum, it can transmit more bits reliably. This is a great advantage for operators. As this will drive the prices down further, it will benefit the consumers too. So there should be a trickle-down effect on the consumers as well.

5G will reduce the latency of communication drastically. lt has a theoretical minimum latency of about 1 millisecond, which basically means that if you’re communicating between two devices, the minimum time it will take between two for the information to travel is just a few milliseconds. That’s theoretical, however. But 5G can truly give you a latency time of fewer than 10 milliseconds, which is very interesting and useful as it can spin off several new technologies and applications. Things like autonomous vehicles, V2X, online gaming, social gaming, and all such new technologies/avenues can be a reality as the lag will be negligible.

Healthcare could be an industry most benefited by 5G. Remote surgery can be a reality as the surgeon will be able to control equipment or robotic equipment remotely from several thousands of kilometers away. This could be the ultimate test of technology as it is machine-critical and lifesaving. A few milliseconds of delay may result in things going south.

Another advantage 5G has over 4G is killing power-hungry devices. Imagine a farm will little to no power connectivity. How can a camera survive there for years if once charged, fully? Hence the influx of 5G will see new, more power-efficient, and compatible devices being introduced in the market. Now if you look at the other side of the spectrum, the business side, the advantages are numerous. 5G gives a whole new dimension to an innovative environment.

The pandemic has turned our work culture upside-down. Work from home is here to stay and with 5G connectivity, the possibilities are endless that one can reap when it comes to meetings, conferences, seminars, training, and more. Just imagine if COVID had struck us a decade back! We didn’t have the kind of technical possibilities that we have now, such as video technologies and better bandwidth. However, I still have my doubts on the timeframe of these turning into reality; possibly four to five years is what I foresee.

Anamika: What does 5G mean for consumers? How is 5G going to impact them? Will there be any kind of cost advantage for the consumers?

Murali: To me, I see a cost advantage for consumers, but partially. If you look at today’s communication scenario, it is cost-effective, especially wireless communication. The cost comes into the picture when we look at reliable, high bandwidth communication, especially the fiber communication at our homes isn’t cheaper yet. But 5G wireless communication will travel from being costly to cost-effective with time. This will open up huge potential for consumers. For example, citizen journalism will witness a steep rise, while the MSM journalists will be able to directly telecast high definition videos from their phone, right from the news spot. Work from any part of the world will become a norm as the internet will show no downturn in speed.

Another aspect for consumers is a digital payment that 4G made a reality, and the pandemic pushed things on fast speed. The roadside vendors, including the vegetable or coconut water vendors, are today empowered with digital payments. UPI is getting stronger with each day. 5G will just multiple these opportunities and power by several times. It will open up windows for small companies and common people to communicate in real-time, just like the tech-savvy giant organizations.

On the other hand, technologies like AR/VR can change the way we watch sports. Combining AR/VR with the power of 5G, we can set up to view the same match with different perspectives. We could perform permutation and combination, do simulation, playback and change what happened, play it again and see how a particular trick would have altered the match. Even athletes can use technology and video analysis to improve their training sessions and work on areas that need more attention. 5G can take you to a level where you can monitor each parameter of your body, monitor your blood pressure, sugar level, pulse rate, heart rate and prevent injuries.

5G can introduce a new business altogether – virtual gaming cafés. Even healthcare centers can better engage their existing equipment and machinery to get a better return on their investment.

Anamika: What are some of the challenges of 5G? Especially looking at the need for consumers to change their devices and the providers/businesses that need to invest heavily in their infrastructure. How are both the users and the providers going to deal with this? 

Murali: We can divide this into two parts. One is the challenges the operators and government will face together. Why government? Because they are also a party to it because of the policy framing. The second is from the perspective of the consumers or enterprises.

As far as the government is concerned, the first major challenge they have is finding the spectrum. 5G needs large chunks of spectrum for each operator. You need a spectrum in the range of 100 megahertz for each operator. So finding this spectrum, auctioning them, and licensing it to the operators should happen within a certain period.

The operators have three-to-four major problems to deal with. One is the need for a different spectrum. The 3G and 4G spectrums were similar and hence its usage was quite linear. Whereas in 5G, usage of the spectrum is divided into three different things as it has got every ambitious objective. You can’t achieve those objectives with just one piece of spectrum. So one will ensure coverage, the other will ensure capacity and the third will ensure throughput. Hence operators are rolling out three different networks, not technically but they have to really start planning things that are needed at these three different levels.

Depending on where the networks are being rolled out, operators have to prioritize these. For instance, if you are rolling out near a stadium, you need higher throughput; when rolling out in rural areas, the importance will be coverage. Hence looking at different pieces of the requirement, the operators have to take their call.

Technology and standards have been evolving continuously. Traditionally, it needed a single network equipment vendor. However, with 5G, you don’t need to buy equipment from a single vendor. Also, a lot of these technologies have transformed into software, which means a significant part of the network shits in your computer; hence eliminating the need to buy proprietary hardware. It’s just like a blade server, making things cheaper and providing multiple choices.

But this has made things more complex because multiple vendors need to inter-operate. Even testing the equipment from various vendors will become a herculean task. But reaping the true potential of 5G will take nearly six years. As I say that every generation of technology is hyped for few applications that the next generation fulfills. The same is true for 5G.

Anamika: What are some of the keys to succeeding 5G proposition and how can the providers maximize their revenue? 

Murali: I don’t think this question has been answered. It’s a very valid question. The use case of 4G was very clear. But with 5G, things are different as we don’t really have a use case. We are dealing with a spectrum shortage. Roll out is yet to pick up the pace. Hence even if 5G is a reality, getting an immediate return on investment is a myth. With time, more applications will be introduced into the market, more digitization of banking and financial services will be seen.

In India, the operators have not invested much in the top technology for telecom except for one, Reliance Jio. They have been at the forefront of investing in innovative, futuristic technologies.

Anamika: In recent times, the Indian government banned a few 5G network communication companies from bidding in India. So how is the government preparing to handle the situation? 

Murali: The government must provide access to spectrum and stronger policy, the regulatory framework which is conducive for businesses. Spectrum is available, but not allocated. Also, there are different ministries involved in the entire process – the telecom ministry and defense ministry are two of them. So coordinating all these and putting them together, putting an auction framework, and auctioning it is all together where the government will play an important role.

And when it comes to banning the vendors, I wouldn’t say much but wait and watch as the two cheapest, cost-effective vendors are banned. This means that the average price has gone up of the equipment. So the operators will have to probably pay a little more than what they would have paid otherwise. Otherwise, I don’t think there is any technology or other limitations.

Anamika: Many countries haven’t implemented 5G yet, while few are talking about 6G. How can these companies speed up the process? 

Murali: The companies that have not yet implemented 4G or 5G or are in the process to implement them wait and work on the next generation. For instance, the country that has not yet implemented 5G should work on 6G as the cost involved is huge and making such huge investments are not easy for any nation.

Anamika: Would you like to add anything apart from what we discussed? 

Murali: It’s a huge opportunity in terms of technical features being developed for the platform. It is also a huge challenge in terms of putting it all together and rolling it out and making sure that we have money to get all those placed. US operators are expected to spend something close to $250 billion from 2020-2025. Just in five years, just in implementing 5G. India is a huge country when it comes to population and hence it needs bigger investment to make it possible. It will enable a lot of innovations, new applications, even for startups and MSMEs.