India’s indigenous 4G/5G is attracting attention overseas

indigenous 5G standard India
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India’s Communications and IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the country’s indigenous 4G and 5G stack has drawn interest from “at least nine or 10 countries”.

Vaishnaw said that this could mean that India will emerge as a potential telecom tech exporter to the world, joining the likes of Europe, China and South Korea.

Speaking at an industry event, Vaishnaw said the virtualized 5G stack is now ready and will soon be deployed. He added that the stack was recently tested for 10 million simultaneous calls.

“With the development of the India stack, we have a solution where you can create population scale solutions, which are tested on platforms. Just like payment platforms, like healthcare, like home, like identity – each of these individual items are powerful in themselves, but combined together, they can help solve any major problem in the world,” the minister said, according to the Economic Times.

“So, this is the power of the India stack and today the whole world wants to try out some of the pieces of it, and our prime minister has given us the authorization to give it as our contribution to the world,” he said.

BSNL first to deploy TCS/C-DOT 4G stack

TCS has partnered with a number of companies as part of its consortium to develop an indigenous 4G and 5G stack along with the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT), which designed and developed core equipment. The stack will be first deployed by state-run telco BSNL for its 4G network. TCS will also act as the master system integrator for BSNL.

C-DoT previously told Indian media that the consortium has a “seamless network scalability roadmap”, which would enable BSNL to evolve to 5G non-standalone (NSA) by end of 2022, and to 5G standalone (SA) by 2023.

Reliance Jio, India’s top telecom operator, has also developed its own 5G stack with the help of sister companies like Radysys. The telco has deployed parts of its locally-developed stack for its 5G network. Jio has also contracted Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung as radio vendors for the network.

Notably, Jio also has an ambition to take its 5G stack to countries in the Middle-East and Africa regions going forward.

Gung-ho on indigenous 5G

India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is gung-ho about the locally developed 4G stack, and recently said that it will help address security-related concerns such as backdoors in telecom gear.

The DoT has claimed that the stack will also be economical compared to comparable technology from big-name vendors like Ericsson and Nokia.

Meanwhile, Vaishnaw also said that within the first 100 days of Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel launching 5G services commercially in October last year, over 200 cities were covered by 5G. Vaishnaw claimed this was the fastest 5G deployment anywhere in the world.

Related article: India’s indigenous 5G tech can win deals globally: minister

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