European telecom equipment makers Ericsson and Nokia say they expect India to play an important role in the development of 6G technology standards.
Ericsson CTO Erik Ekudden said that the vendor wants to support India – along with different regions – to contribute towards 6G standardisation.
“India is already playing an important role in 5G and also understands the standardisation side. My indications are that India intends to continue to play an important role going into 6G,” Ekudden was quoted as saying by the Economic Times.
Meanwhile, Nokia’s chief technology and strategy officer Nishant Batra said India has already become the third largest country for engagement in 6G standardisation. Batra added that Nokia is hiring top talents in its Bengaluru office with competence in 6G standardisation.
India already working on 6G
The Indian government has already started work on 6G standardisation to ensure that India-specific requirements are included in the global 6G standard. In 2021, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) set up a Technology Innovation Group on 6G (TIG-6G) with members from various ministries and departments, R&D institutions, telecom service providers and industry to develop a vision, mission and goals for 6G.
TIG-6G is also working on developing a roadmap and action plans for 6G in India. As per reports, India is contributing to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in its 6G visioning exercise.
Notably, India’s collaborative 6G work follows the failure of its local 5G radio interface standard, 5Gi, developed by Telecom Standards Development Society India (TSDSI) for both local and overseas telcos and vendors. However, the standard was ultimately merged with the 3GPP’s 5G standard.
Get rid of 2G, Ericsson says
Ericsson’s Ekudden also said that Indian telecom operators need to explore ways to shut down their 2G networks to reduce expenditure. Around 300 million consumers still use 2G in India.
“Moving from 4G to 5G will reduce energy consumption. We’ve talked about how we can break the energy curve, how we can lower the total energy consumption despite the fact that the traffic will grow by a factor of four over the coming five years,” he told the publication.
“So being on the latest technology is always the right choice. And then as much as possible, get rid of the previous technology.”
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