Bharti Group Chairman Sunil Mittal stated that the funds from the rights issue would be deployed in 5G, fibre (both for 5G and Home and Broadband) and data centres. With 15% of the handsets shipped being 5G-capable today and 5G auctions planned in early 2022. Airtel sees 5G rollouts happening in a staggered manner from second half of 2022. We estimate that 5G handsets to constitute 40%/15% of the installed handset base in metros/India; Airtel’s rollout could thus be timely. Airtel expects 5G to become a reality and devices to become fairly prevalent in metros by 2H2022. This would be followed by increase in spread in smaller towns. It hopes that the government makes 5G spectrum prices attractive. In home Broadband, it targets
5G
China 5G Network – Focus shifts to Coverage from Scale
The Chinese Telecom think-tanks have changed their strategy over the last six months, mainly driven by increasing recognition as a result of China Mobile / Telecom / Unicom lobbying that the 5G ecosystem will take time to mature, and an escalating global tech war that has substantially reduced the size of global demand for Chinese telecom equipment.
There were two key objectives in China’s aggressive push of 5G buildout as under
What is Jio’s 5G Network & SmartPhone Technology Plan ?
Reliance Jio has stated that it will start developing its own 5G solution, which it will roll out by end of 2021 provided they are allotted the required spectrum band by DoT’s SACFA. Jio will most likely follow the ORAN (Open Radio Access Network), as done by some other developers like Rakuten in Japan. The general idea is the software developers will combine their software with general-purpose hardware (from Intel, Nvidia, etc.), along with radios from similar vendors.
Reliance Jio in conjunction with other local IT players, has managed to build its own 5G software stack and is likely embracing Open RAN techniques or possibly even Cloud-RAN as an architecture. This would allow them to avoid paying to network gear vendors (i.e. Ericsson, Nokia or Samsung in lids case for 4G) and potentially allow them to export their expertise to
How Big is China’s 5G Infrastructure Deployment ?
On 21st Feb Chinese Ministry of Telecom announced a national policy to accelerate 5G rollout, aiming to use 5G Capital Expenditure as a way to stimulate the Economy after COVID-19 epidemic. This is similar to the response seen in 2009 post the GFC when infrastructure building for 3G was seen as way to get money into the system. 3G licenses were issued to the big three carriers (China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom).
China Mobile the largest consumer of optical fiber cable (OFC) globally, had announced its 2020 tender China Mobile Tender Points to Gradual Demand Pickup to procure standard OFC cables a month back. Our analysis of the tender had indicated an expected