Spectrum Auction

5G

·        In a meeting of the Digital communications Commission held on June 13,2019 it was decided that the DoT will ask Trai to reconsider its recommendations on spectrum auctions, including pricing and quantum of airwaves

·        On 5G trials, the DCC has agreed on single window clearance for auctions for conducting 5G trials for a period of 1 year with a provision for extension.

·        DoT is in the process of drafting the notice inviting applications or the bidding the document, which could be issued in October 2019 for spectrum auction likely to be held in Dec 2019.

·        Phone companies want the govt. to auction spectrum in the 26 GHz and 28 GHz bands for 5G services in the upcoming sale, and suggested that the DoT urgently seek the sector regulator’s views on pricing these premium airwaves.

·         India must emulate US, South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong, who have already auctioned 28GHz spectrum and started deployments without waiting for the International Telecom Union to identify the band, given the increasing ecosystem around this millimeter wave spectrum.

·        However, presently both the 26 GHz and 28 GHz bands are being used for delivery of fixed satellite services by Indian Space Research Organization

·        The auction is expected to be India’s largest so far, with 8,293.95 MHz of airwaves at an estimated total base price of Rs. 5.77 lakh crore expected to go under the hammer

·        India as at least a year behind compared to many other nations where the 5G rollout has already started.

·        Ericsson and SoftBank initiated joint proof of concept activities in 2015 and have successfully expanded their collaboration to include 5G testing of multi-bands, including 28GHz and 4.5 GHz

·        On June 4, 2019 Nokia confirmed that it had inked 42 commercial 5G deals with operators around the world, including T-Mobile and Telia Company.

Hotspots for AII

Public Wi-Fi could provide ubiquitous broadband access

·        An ICRIER-BIF study pegs the internet’s contribution to India GDP at about 16% or $534 billion by 2020.

·        As per an Analysys Mason Report on public Wi-Fi released in July 2018, India’s GDP could increase by over $20 billion between 2017 and 2019, largely due to public Wi-Fi.

·        The National Digital Communications Policy (NDCP), 2018 has set ambitious targets for public Wi-Fi hotspots both in cities/metros as well as in rural areas under the Connect India mission.

·        It has  set a target of 5 million public Wi-Fi hotspots by 2020 and 10 million by 2022.

·        For this 2 initiatives have been proposed

o   NagarNet – for establishing 1 million hotspots in urban areas;

o   JanWiFi – for establishing 2 million hotspots in rural areas.

·        The Department of Telecommunications gazette notification to delicense 605MHz of the 5GHz band in line with developed economies such as the US, the UK and korea is a welcome step. Earlier only 50 Mhz was allotted.

·        It will increase the availability of unlicensed spectrum for public Wi-Fi by almost 6 times.

·        The new government recent plans to launch a network of interoperable 500,000 public Wi-Fi hotspots are laudable.

Role of AI in NFV ?

The aim of AI driven autonomous networks is to create a self driving network model with 3 features: agile devices, intelligent control and intelligent analysis

Developing a self-driving network is a long term process that we have divided into 5 phases.

1- AI knows “what happened”

2- AI can determine “why it happened”

3-AI can predict “what will happen”

4- AI judges” what measures need to be taken”

5- Full automation enables self-healing.

Surge in SDN and NFV deployments globally

According to a report by Global Market Insights, the SDN market is expected to grow from around $8 billion in 2018 to $100 billion by 2025.

Hack alert

·       According to the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), India is one of the most vulnerable countries with regard to cyber attacks.

·       The primary factors responsible for the increased risk to critical digital infrastructure is wider adoption of the internet, smartphones and other connected devices, growing digital interconnectivity across sectors and lack of awareness.

·       Among 60 countries, India is ranked 15^th in terms of cybersecurity.

·       Nearly 39% of these alerts remain unattended due to the lack of required skill sets according to a report by Cisco Systems.

·       In July 2018, an ATM scam was reported in Kolkata, which resulted in losses of over Rs 2 million, affecting more than 75 people.

·       In August 2018, criminals were accused of making fraudulent bank transfers by stealing SIM card information.

·       In the same month, Pune-headquartered Cosmos Bank lost nearly$13.5 million when anonymous hackers stole customer information by installing malware on the firm’s ATM server, and then conducted globally coordinated withdrawals in 28 countries.

·       The bank lost another $2 million when hackers made three unauthorized transfers to a Hong Kong-based company’s account.

·       Aadhar has also fallen prey to multiple breaches.

·       Further, since the digitalization of govt. operations, around 700 hacks into the state and central govt. websites have been reported in the LokSabha.

·       Government measures:

·       3 ways to secure national cyberspace

·       In 2008, Govt. enacted Information Technology(Amendment) Act, 2008—to cater to the cybersecurity needs of the country.

·       In 2013, the Govt. announced the National Cyber Security Policy with the aim of integrating all cybersecurity initiatives and tackling cybercrime.

oT will add $10 to $15 trillion to global GDP in the next 20 years.

           Software defined networking (SDN) and its  complementary technology network functions virtualization (NFV) are helping enterprises globally in improving the agility, automation capability, flexibility and interoperability of their network designs.

·       SDN helps create a virtualized network overlay, which allows the underlying network to quickly respond to network changes and forward traffic efficiently.

·             NFV allows the transition of traditional network functions such as load balancers, firewalls, subscriber policy management, and mobile radio access network from a physical hardware set up to a virtual network.

·           SDN and NFV deployments have started altering operational and service dynamics for telecom operators across the world.

·            Operators are increasingly using SDN an NFV to manage and provision network services from a centralized location, thereby enabling faster and cost-efficient delivery of on-demand applications with minimal disruption.

·       Besides, the bandwidth flexibility, programmability and automation capabilities of SDN and NFV are helping service providers monetize their range of services linked to the internet of things (IoT) and cloud infrastructure.

·                   The global SDN market is expected to grow from $8.8 billion in 2018 to $28.9 billion by 2023, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.8%.

·          As per industry estimates, the size of the NFV market will reach $70 billion by 2024 driven by the growing adoption of mobility.

·              At present Bharti Airtel is using SDN/NFV to offer music and on-demand video services.

·              Vodafone Idea Limited is also running trials of SDN and NFV and plans to soon deploy these technologies commercially.

·       Enabling role of SDN and NFV in 5G roll-outs

·            SDN and NFV are expected to accelerate 5G deployment by addressing the major functional needs of 5G networks.

·        SDN and NFV will also help operators scale easily to support 5G expansion and configure their networks to allow seamless interaction among different services inside the core network.

·             NFV will play a critical role in the deployment of 5G services on the third party hosting infrastructures.

·         Meanwhile, SDN can be used to provide an overall framework to enable 5G to function across a normalized control plane.

·           Over the past 2 to 3 years wide-area network (SD-WAN) has emerged as the most popular application of SDN technology.

·       Key Challenges

·     For one until the migration to all virtual networks is completed, enterprises and services providers will have to deal with a combination of legacy networks and new virtualized networks to manage a multivendor environment

·  Further an enterprise cannot fully leverage SDN and NFV unless its operations support systems and business support systems are aligned with the new technologies.

·   On the technology front the lack of mature technology, consensus on multiple open source standardization initiatives and proven business cases also pose significant challenges.

5G Testing

It will bring a paradigm shift towards a user and application centric technology framework to support 3 key use cases:

1.) Enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) supporting the ever-increasing end-user data rate and system capacity

2.) Massive machine type communications (mMTC) ensuring cost efficient and robust connectivity among billions of devices without overloading the network.

3.) Ultra – reliable low latency communication (URLLC) that supports the new needs of vertical industries like autonomous driving, remote surgery for eHealth and cloud robotics for Industry 4.0

                   

·       Therefore to get 5G equipment to market quickly, efficiently and economically, T&M vendors will have to work closely with top-tier equipments makers and the standards authorities to resolve technical challenges and provide T&M solutions that are fil for purpose and have a low cost of ownership.

·       5G Testing Scenario

·       Since both 4G and 5G technologies are based on OFDM, the existing equipment for 4G can often be upgraded , in some cases just with software to make them suitable for 5G.

·       This is the case with signal generators, and spectrum and signal analysers manufactured by leading T&M equipment vendors.

·       In other cases hardware evolution is required.

·       This is the case for eg. Vector network analysers, which are required to have multiport test capabilities to support massive multiple input, multiple output MIMO