Two of the three biggest network equipment providers are now reassuring that 5G network rollouts would be deployed faster in India. These two equipment suppliers are Nokia and Ericsson who are promising their clients Airtel and Vodafone of faster 5G deployment in the country after the upcoming 5G trials and allotment. In addition to that, Samsung is also eyeing to capitalise on the 5G equipment market after solely powering Reliance Jio’s networks for the past few years.
While not in the lead, Nokia and Ericsson are now banking on Huawei being excluded from the list of 5G equipment vendors to boost their 5G deals in the country. Speaking to ET, an Ericsson spokesperson said that the company has enough resources and the supply chain capacity to meet the fast 5G demand in India. The spokesperson said, “We stand ready to meet our current and future customers’ 5G needs and work with them at speed to get such networks operational at the earliest opportunity”.
Ericsson has stressed the dependence of service providers like Airtel and Vodafone will be a key factor to determine the deployment of 5G in India. The company partnered with Oppo earlier this year for the development and licensing of the latter’s new line of 5G smartphones.
Prior to that, Ericsson had also announced that it will deploy 5G-ready LTE equipment for Vodafone Idea across eight circles in India. Last year, the company teamed up with state-run BSNL to work together on developing 5G services and applications with speeds as high as 5.7GBPS and ultra-low Latency of 3ms.
What did Nokia say about 5G rollouts in India
Repeating on Ericsson’s promise, a Nokia spokeswoman also said: “Nokia has deployed over 1.3 lakh new sites across India in calendar 2018, and with our huge deployment machinery, we are prepared to support our customers in launching 5G networks as soon as possible”.
Earlier last month, Nokia announced that it had struck a total of 42 signed commercial 5G contracts across the world. Previously, the company had started manufacturing 5G radio equipment in India at its Chennai factory in South India. The 5G New Radio (NR) will be based on the 3GPP 5G New Radio Release 15 standard and will support data consumption by providing significantly more network capacity, higher user throughput and lower latency with increased network reliability.
Both companies have thus reassured their clients that 5G rollout will happen on time even if Huawei is barred from selling its 5G equipment in the country over concerns of security. Huawei recently urged India to make an informed decision on the upcoming 5G trials, independent of its status with the US.
Will Huawei continue to power 5G networks in the country?
Huawei is also the leading 5G equipment supplier in the world, having nabbed 50 commercial 5G contracts outside China and shipping more than 1,50,000 base stations around the world.
The report also added excerpts from an interaction with a Huawei India official who said: “Huawei is 12-to-18 months ahead of the industry on 5G, and can deploy 5G networks in India’s key cities in just a year, given the rapidly maturing 5G ecosystem”.
Huawei, who was earlier barred from dealing with companies in the US has now been given a breather. The US government announced at the G20 summit in Japan that American companies will now be allowed to do business with Huawei, though a permanent decision on the company’s selling powers will be decided on a later date.
A new player in the 5G game – Samsung
An earlier report from ET also revealed that Samsung is working with operators in India for the upcoming 5G rollout, meaning there’ll soon be a fourth player in the Indian telecom equipment market. The South Korean company was previously Reliance Jio’s sole 4G gear provider but now it appears that Samsung is eyeing deals with Airtel and Vodafone for the supply of 5G network equipment.
Samsung Mobile Communications Business VP, Junehee Lee said “We have worked closely with carriers from the beginning and make sure that everything operates smoothly….we have partners in the US, Korea and some parts of Europe and hopefully, we will work with carriers in India as well when they decide to roll out their 5G networks”.
Samsung is also working with Chinese OEMs – Vivo and Oppo. The company is offering samples of its 5G chipset solutions to Vivo and Oppo for testing and verification. Samsung started mass producing its 5G communication solutions for the next generation of premium smartphones earlier this year which will include the Exynos Modem 5100, Exynos RF 5500 transceiver and Exynos SM 5800 supply modulator.