New Delhi, 06 March 2020: Telecom operators in India have reiterated their commitment to providing the best services to the consumers with continuous investments in the latest technology. The final report of the 5G India Forum Independent Evaluation Group (5GIF IEG) states that operators are empowering consumers with the power to check and opt for technologies that meet a minimum technical performance requirement in an era of 5G spectrum. A significant outcome of this effort was that an industry-grade simulator that was built for the purpose of evaluation and that can now be leveraged for future technology studies in India.

The 5G India Forum (5GIF) has been established under the aegis of COAI, aiming to become the leading force in the development of next generation communications and will enable synergizing national efforts and will play a significant role in shaping the strategic, commercial and regulatory development of the 5G ecosystem in India.

While the primary objective of the 5GIF IEG was to evaluate candidate technologies in the ITU defined framework, COAI tasked the IEG to qualify how the behaviour of the 3GPP standards-based technologies (that have successfully given more than two decades of “seamless connectivity”, and facilitated large scale market adoption) fare now in meeting the targets set by NDCP 2018. In this regard we had provided evaluation results on a couple of additional scenarios that reflect real-life Indian network deployment.

The 5GIF IEG, a part of 5G India Forum (5GIF) is one of the registered Independent Evaluation Groups (IEG) for evaluation of the new 5G (or also known as IMT-2020) candidate radio technologies. It was formed to evaluate these technologies from the perspective of Indian telecom network deployments for 5G. The Group comprises of telecom operators, OEM’s, universities and individual experts participating in a collaborative manner. 5GIF aims to become the leading force in the development of next-generation communications while playing a significant role in shaping the strategic, commercial and regulatory development of the 5G ecosystem in India.

According to Rajan S. Mathews, Director General, COAI, “We are happy to announce that the final report of the 5GIF IEG is now published by the ITU-R WP5D group that is evaluating 5G (IMT-2020) technologies. COAI firmly believes that the 5GIF IEG report demonstrates India’s technical expertise in evaluating the latest 5G technologies, and the report has all this information needed by the global operators to use in their decision making.”

5GIF IEG evaluated candidate radio interface technology (RIT) submissions under two categories. The first category involved candidate RIT submissions belonging to the class of globally harmonized standards that are based on technologies developed by the 3GPP (specifically 3GPP New Radio). The second category of the evaluation was on a couple of technologies not belonging to this category of globally harmonized standards. These technologies do not interwork with 3GPP networks (yet) and are of minimal interest.

The responses and reviews from consumers will be used by the operators to assess and decide on the adoption of appropriate technology. The adoption of a particular technology for 5G will depend on the global interest in the technology. It will then map the cost of network and equipment its compatibility to existing telecom infrastructure and support for international roaming and interoperability.

Results of the evaluation by the 5GIF IEG found interest amongst the delegates representing the African, South American and South-East Asian countries. COAI firmly believes that the objective of setting up this IEG lived up to the expectation and made a mark at the international stage in the ITU world.

COAI led the 5GIF IEG delegation, and Ericsson India chaired the drafting group (DG) on evaluation at this meeting. The delegation also included representatives from Qualcomm India, Intel India and Huawei India.

The evaluation activity was supported by academic members from Amrita University, LNMIIT University, Shiv Nadar University and Amity University. The industry participants include experts from Bharti Airtel Ltd., Vodafone Idea Ltd., Ericsson India, Huawei India, Intel India, Nokia India, Qualcomm India and ZTE India. The report is also posted in the 5GIF section of the COAI website and is available at :https://www.coai.com/themes/bootstrap/images/5GIF_Evaluation_Report_final.pdf. and at ITU website athttp://www.itu.int/md/R19-WP5D-C-0136/en