Indian telecom regulators accepted the case for allocating mid-band spectrum to enterprises. They agreed with the idea that it would encourage much-needed innovative enterprise solutions. In contrast, incumbent telecom operators opposed spectrum allocation to private enterprises because they feared they could not recoup their investments in the radio spectrum. A persuasive study on private networks by the Broadband India Forum tilted policy in favor of spectrum allocation to the enterprise besides other options such as leasing from TSPs (Technology Service Providers), a network slice from a TSP, or an isolated indoor network but with spectrum from a TSP.
The pent-up demand for enterprise applications
Indian enterprises have a pent-up demand for business-critical applications held back by the inability of public operators to provide networks able to perform with the desired quality of service. According to a survey of 316 organizations in India by Omdia, their most important concern is networks’ reliability, which affects nearly 40% of them. Additionally, poor service control and security concern almost 35% of them. They expect to reduce their dependence on fixed WAN networking (22%), accelerate process automation (22%), and open new revenue opportunities (21%) with increasing deployment of private networks.
Enterprise leaders are aware of the possibilities of generating new sources of revenue with private 5G. The low-hanging fruit of digital transformation for Indian enterprises is enhancing streaming services, including live events and gaming (53%), and connected video recognition and analytics for inspection and tracking (50%). Indian enterprises expect to make progress by hiring solution providers rather than purchasing individual equipment.
The opportunity costs of the absence of high-quality networks
The absence of private 5G networks or their slow pace of adoption is increasingly viewed as expensive in terms of opportunity costs. Indian ports like Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT), the largest in India, are far down in global ranks at twenty-fourth among container ports. It is facing competitive pressure from private and foreign ports. The Broadband India Forum cited above concluded that IT applications can realize high rates of ROI, such as condition monitoring (138%), followed by cellular-connected AGVs (98%) and drones for surveillance (93%), which can reap significant benefits. The cost of idle berthing in ports alone can be reduced from about five hours to an hour, resulting in 15-20% saving on daily charter costs to ship operators for each arrival or departure.
Private network deployments in India
Tata Communications has launched a dedicated private 5G global center in Pune to test and trial services across mining, airports, manufacturing, and healthcare industries. It will deploy radio access and core network products compatible with open RAN.
Additionally, TCS will provide system integration services and is developing network management solutions, such as Network as a Service, by leveraging the cognitive radio technologies that came with the acquisition of Saakhya Labs. It will make it possible to stream video content to mobile phone users.
Additionally, TCS has set up a lab to develop and test enterprise applications with private networks. At this stage, it can demonstrate private 5G use cases such as automated quality inspection of equipment using video and image analytics, inventory management, and asset tracking for manufacturing clients. For the supply chain, it can demonstrate warehouse theft detection, AR/VR-based remote worker collaboration, and video-powered retail purchasing, among others.
Adani Group is a major league Indian enterprise aggressively pursuing private networks in India. It participated in the 5G spectrum auction for private network solutions with cyber security in airports, ports and logistics, power generation, transmission, distribution, and various manufacturing operations. These are also industries where the conglomerate has investments.
The Adani group understandably has a pressing need for private 5G networks as it builds digital platforms to support complex applications, edge data centers, and industry command and control centers for its current businesses. The private networks must support ultra-high quality data streaming capabilities using high-frequency spectrum for high bandwidth and 5G networks for low latencies.
To this end, the Adani Group purchased 400 MHz airwaves in the 26 GHz (mmWave) band, the sole non-telco to have purchased access. In addition, Nokia is in touch with the group to establish private networks for the group’s business interests.
Among the public service providers, Bharti Airtel is a pioneer in deploying a private network for Bosch Automotive Electronics India (RBAI) facility in Bengaluru. The network helps aggregate data from thousands of connected devices. The Bosch Manufacturing Execution System slashes the time for optical inspection. Airtel’s 5G private network helped Bosch spot and troubleshoot real-time issues.
Conclusion
After a long period of wrestling to resolve policy issues over spectrum allocation, India has set the stage for expanding enterprise applications in the private 5G and mmWave environment. Indian enterprises urgently need to gain control over networks to implement applications to serve the needs of their customers.
