Telecom players to lead digital transformation in India

India is undergoing a digital transformation lead by steeply growing numbers of broadband connections, internet usage, data consumption and more. With the government's focus to push digitization across industries and also at an individual level, technology is playing a pivotal in bringing the socio-economic transformation as well.

We can say that the pace of technology adoption is directly proportionate to the socio-economic growth of a nation. In this regards, India's preparation to adopt 5G technology is a significant step towards a greater good.

5G, the next-generation cellular technology that is built to provide better and faster communication has been the talk of the town in India for a few years now. The government of India aims to launch the service by 2020. Whereas countries like South Korea and the UK have already rolled out commercial 5G services.

Along with benefits like the faster download of data-heavy content within few seconds, 5G is also expected to lay a strong foundation for emerging technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), advanced data analytics, faster real-time data analytics, machine-to-machine communications and more. For businesses as well as a common man 5G technology will provide innumerable benefits and our engagement with technology will become seamless with touch and voice command capabilities.

The larger picture

In 2020, India's Internet economy is expected to reach USD 250 billion and contribute 7.5 per cent to national GDP from current contribution of 5 per cent. This growth will be fuelled by the addition of the massive number of online users and volatile growth in data consumption. However, with 5G's adoption, this growth will further reach an explosive number.

As per a government-appointed panel, it is expected that 5G will create an economic impact of USD 1 trillion by 2035. Whereas, Ericsson projects that 5G enabled digitalization revenue potential will be more than USD 27 billion by 2026 in India. Needless to say that with the current plan of government and private players in place, 5G will help India leapfrog its ambitious goals.

The Action plan

5G will introduce new levels of performance, additional characteristics, and capabilities to telecom networks. The telecom players will need to establish a new ecosystem to enable new services and upgrade their current infrastructure to support the 5G vision.

Having said that, the time in hand to execute the plans is short making this project an ambitious one, but not impossible. In the world of technology, nothing is exposed to the world before testing and when it comes to a critical project like 5G it becomes all the more important.

From a testing point of view, the need of throughput (number of items that will transport) and latency (the speed required to transport) that a large number of internet-enabled devices will put on networks, will require a thorough and deep level of testing. This will be significant to provide quality 5G service. Not only the service side, but testing solutions will also be required for IoT devices.

One of the best ways to plan cost-effective testing at a faster pace is to collaborate with the rental industry players who have always stood by the telecom players in India when it comes to easy access to required equipment of global standard. The rental players can play a significant role for telecom players in availing test solutions to overcome challenges while keeping the costs of carrying out such tests on the lower side.

The unfamiliarity of the testing projects due to the involvement of the massive number of devices often leads to a miscalculation of the project's budget. However, with support from rental industry players, telecom players can avail flexible, cost-effective, and easy to deploy test solutions from global OEMs.

By Ajay Gulati, Sr. VP sales & Business development, Electro Rent India