India's 5G leapfrog

The launch of 5G services in India earlier this month by Prime Minister Narendra Modi marked an inflection point in the roll-out of communication services. It was perhaps for the first time that India had leapfrogged to adopt cutting-edge technology, with the major technology platforms scrambling to play catch-up. With 5G services available in major Indian cities thanks to the network roll-out by cellular companies, the popular platforms of Apple iOS and Google Android were yet to roll out software support for 5G. This lag in the technology innovation cycle between the networks and the software platforms was particularly stark with several home-grown cellular device manufacturers set to sell 5G-enabled phones within a couple of days ahead of the festival shopping season. India’s 5G leapfrog also dovetails another major milestone for Aatmanirbhar Bharat in hi-tech manufacturing with iPhone exports for a single month clocking a billion dollars in value. For the first time India as a manufacturing base for Apple is rolling out the latest iPhone14 within weeks of its global launch. With increasing sourcing of components and accessories from India, the boost in domestic hi-tech manufacturing is dovetailing the 5G leapfrog.

5G innovation in India over the past few years is also remarkable for the IITs coming of age. In a sign of how the IITs have come to privilege innovation over abstract research, the first ever innovation showcase of the IITs is being held in Delhi. From home-grown ventilators during the Covid-19 crisis to drones stealing the show during beating retreat, brand IIT is now emerging as a powerhouse for start-ups and innovations. It is also to the credit of the IITs that a 5G test bed was created to jumpstart the domestic ecosystem. The drafting of an India-specific 5G standard and the adoption by 3GPP marks the coming of age for IITs in driving innovation beyond borders to influence global standards. It is noteworthy that the IInvenTiv 22 R&D fair has 23 IITs participating in a sign of an innovation-first culture in the recently established IITs. With the draft Telecom Bill’s focus on R&D and ease of doing business to promote innovation by facilitating experimental licences and lowering barriers to experimentation, the opportunity is for India to take a leadership position looking ahead of the technology curve.

Direct-to-mobile broadcasting, D2M, is a low-hanging fruit where India can show the world the way on convergence between broadcasting and 5G. It is imperative to build on the thought leadership of IIT Kanpur and the technology innovation of start-ups to define the road map for how 5G-capable smartphones in India can directly receive broadcast signals. Mandating such a capability to all 5G-capable phones made in India would be both in strategic and national interest giving India the unique ability to disintermediate social media platforms from controlling streaming of live broadcasts. With the increasing frequency at which extreme weather events are occurring, emergency alerting and disaster management broadcasts being delivered directly to smartphones would be a critical public service. Building the infrastructure for D2M in convergence with 5G will require creatively leveraging the existing public broadcast infrastructure in the 19 cities that already have digital terrestrial TV alongside a public-private partnership model for cellular broadcast to optimally leverage the spectrum. Availability of ultra-high frequency spectrum above 520 MHz for D2M broadcasting will be a key requirement to ensure synergy with the global device ecosystem. While the device ecosystem evolves, in-vehicle D2M broadcasting could be a rapid adoption use case for India to pilot, given the low barriers for hardware integration.

In-vehicle D2M broadcasting in these 19 cities could also pave the way for digital radio services on a common converged broadcast infrastructure. A recent E&Y report on a digital radio road map for India had assessed two candidate standards of DRM and HD radio. However, both standards will require parallel islands of broadcast infrastructure with no backward compatibility. It is highly debatable if consumers will adopt new radio devices based on these standards in the absence of backward compatibility. A better proposition for consumers would be a common converged broadcast interface through which video, audio and data services can be received on a range of devices from smartphones to car dashboards. This kind of convergence across broadcast content would pave the way for offering a large number of personalised streams of audio/video over the same spectrum, eliminating the need for parallel islands of broadcast infrastructure and multiple spectrum bands as is the case currently with DTT for TV and FM for radio.

As 5G innovation in India looks for new use cases from enterprise applications to education, India must take the lead in convergence across broadcasting and communications as well as across video and audio. A 5G converged architecture for D2M broadcasting would not only take the traffic load off cellular networks but would also for the first time enable broadcasting measurable in real time across video and audio streaming. A coherent policy initiative is critical for India to realise this opportunity with public broadcasting and private platforms collaborating on building D2M in India. Such an initiative will mark a significant leapfrog by India in not merely rolling out high-speed infrastructure but fundamentally reshaping broadcasting for decades to come.

The writer is former CEO of Prasar Bharati