NEW DELHI: Deployment of optic fibre cable (OFC) as a transport layer is essentially needed to create future telecom networks capable to handle ever-increasing data load, the telecom industry experts and executives Friday said.
“There is a huge potential and opportunity and a lot of fibre and policy frameworks has to happen and it’s time for India to make that happen,” Balesh Sharma, chief executive of Vodafone Idea Limited (VIL) said.
Sharma also said that the industry should create ecosystem since the capacity is growing high while latency going low in the new 5G era.
“When we look at networks of future, we should also look at solutions such as virtualisation. Transport layer which can be fiber is required in addition to software,” Sterlite Tech group chief executive Anand Agarwal said, adding that India would leapfrog in new technology adoption.
India that currently lags behind the global average, has close to 22% of the fibre-connected mobile infrastructure, and the government, as a part of the national policy, has already announced setting up of the National Fibre Authority (NFA) to accelerate fibre deployment in the country.
Once cities are entirely covered by fibre, points of presence, according to Agarwal, should be deployed by telcos to offer next generation technology based services.
The Pune-based company feels that with Internet speed going up and ever-growing capacity, it was imperative to simplify the entire network and telcos should look at transport layer.
“We have to look at latest available technology for mobile broadband. 5G will happen as expected. In order t build future-proof networks, massive invesments are needed,” Nunzio Mirtillo, senior vice president at Ericsson said.
Mirtillo, however, believes that as data consumption would go up, higher quality of mobile networks are required to carry load.
“India has a lot of potential to evolve networks of tomorrow. We are looking at edge computing, and machine learning and Artificial Intelligence,” Jay Kim, vice president, Samsung said, adding that Big Data analysis allows user behaviour for new service offerings.
“By virtualisation, the operators can be more flexible, and it is important to adopt new technology quickly,” Kim said.
Jay Chen, chief executive, Huawei India said that the company was witnessing a strange perspective in telecom market.
Chinese Huawei Technologies is one of the largest telecom gear makers worldwide, and competes with Swedish Ericsson and Finnish Nokia.
“We are seeing how 5G network can support 4G at the same time. This kind of networks take layered approach, and how operators develop services is the current focus area,” Chen added.
Post time: Dec-01-2018