New Delhi. 07/21/2021 As India’s digital ecosystem has become extremely dense over the past few years, connectivity infrastructure requires a whole new overhaul that can thrive in today’s huge amount of data traffic. ETTelecom.com and Telecommunication infrastructure project (TIP) organizes a virtual summit at which experts and thought leaders from industry gathered to discuss how India is planning its path to a transformed network ecology. Titled ‘The virtual summit in India, he explores the capabilities of India ‘s rich domestic telecommunications ecosystem, which is ready to meet the country’ s rapidly growing data needs.
The local panel discussion: Building for India and beyond brought together prominent experts from Indian technology vendors who develop hardware and software products for OpenRAN and open transport, and system integrators that contribute to building complete solutions combining these products. The main topics for discussion include: Why India needs reinforced networks to meet the growing demand for data traffic; The advantages and disadvantages of open and disaggregated interoperable networks; Strengths and weaknesses of India’s domestic telecommunications ecosystem; and, Where India stands at the link of the last mile.
Emphasizing TIP’s key role in transforming India’s rich local ecosystem sufficiently capable of managing this transformation on its own, using the global trend towards open and disaggregated technologies, moderator Hutton said: “To maximize the value of open and disaggregated Networking is key to enabling the community of different technology providers and system integrators to work together with service providers to build, test and validate solutions delivering technology requirements for critical connectivity cases. “
Balram Sharma, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Business Access – 5G, STL, emphasized the role of STL in the ecosystem. “People have begun to move away from monolithic patented systems to open, disaggregated and virtualized network systems. We play in two main areas – fixed and wireless network. On the fixed network side, we build programmable FTTx solutions for home connections and corporate markets. On the wireless network side, we saw that the software system was maturing well, but not the hardware system, so we started investing in building a hardware ecosystem that is compatible with ORAN, with a product portfolio covering the enterprise and telecommunications markets. In addition, we have also invested in software to build a company for the corporate market. “
Joseph George, Vice President – 5G and Data Center, VVDN, emphasized that the role of innovation and highly optimized hardware designs contribute to cost efficiency, one of the advantages of OpenRAN, “We have our own internal hardware capabilities that we can use to make hardware platforms with high implementation cost efficiency. To control costs, we have a very strategic relationship with the entire supply chain, with very strict control over it, along with our own production facility, which can produce very large quantities of this equipment in a short time. “
Nitesh Bansal, SVP & Global Head, Engineering Services, Infosys, talks about how they build this level of confidence and confidence in disaggregated solutions and accelerate time to market by working within the TIP community-based approach. “As a system integrator, it is crucial for us to understand how the networks will be consumed. As basic goods and services, such as education, banking, and others, are consumed in a diffuse way, the role of basic connectivity has become a major life force for existence and for us to grow in the future. Businesses have been on this digitalisation journey for several years, but only at the front office. The back of the house where the production takes place has not yet been digitized and this became apparent during the pandemic. Open and disaggregated networks can facilitate this process. All the knowledge about the unification of this ecosystem of the carrier class makes what makes system integrators suitable for enterprises, on the one hand, and also network operators and network companies, on the other hand. The work that TIP does allows us not only to confirm the concept and implementation that we offer at the table, but also becomes a great partner for us in the work on the road to automation. “
Manish Mangal, Head of Global Business, Network Services, Tech M, discussed how to deal with the challenges of integrating the various elements of open and disaggregated networks. “We emerged as a telecocentric company and are part of the network transformations since the invention of networks. 5G is not just for serving more data. 5G introduces principles for virtualization and flexible IT in the design of the network, the most important area being the radio network, because it involves 70% of the capital of each operator. In this context, the main challenge when you start to disaggregate is how to put everything back together and we still have the confidence that it will work well. We solve this problem in two ways: we need a huge amount of integration and testing activities to go together, internally and as part of a public ecosystem, which is why TIP is a great place; instead of a system integrator, we now call ourselves a software-oriented “continuous integrator” with a deep knowledge of the network domain, with full accountability and responsibility for continuous integration for our customers. “
Abhidjit Chaudhari, Founder and CEO, Niral Networks, shed light on innovations in the transport space, without which the impact of 5G and Wi-Fi 6 may not be realized, and revealed how his company “develops an open, disaggregated and accessible network operating system for transport infrastructure. He also mentioned “a miniature version of the 5G package core that will be used by companies to create their own private 5G solutions.” Chaudhary shared his experience working at TIP: “We have been working with TIP since we started the company. TIP has created an interesting ecosystem that includes our partners (SI, ODM, chipset manufacturers), our competitors, as well as our customers – mobile operators and Internet service providers. TIP provided us with an important platform for presenting our product, for collaborating with our partners, receiving feedback from our customers as well as other stakeholders, and access to test labs to test our interoperability, scalability, performance, and maintenance. features, which is crucial for a small startup like Niral. “
Ready to stimulate wireless internet and last mile end access, India’s rich local ecosystem of open network players is ready to work within the TIP community to manage this transformation independently.
India’s growing connectivity needs call for a stronger telecommunications infrastructure. Experts point to open and disaggregated networks as key. To what extent does our speaker system think that the telecommunications sector in India is ready for the future? See what they had to say at this session and all the other sessions of the Virtual India Summit. Press here: https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/built-in-india.