The comment comes after Airtel said Tuesday that it closed a 5G core equipment purchase deal with Sweden’s Ericsson to drive progressive migration of its 5G mobile broadband network to the SA mode. The deal gave rise to talk that Airtel would be switching modes shortly.
The executive denied any such plans. “SA… we are already doing it for our fixed wireless access (FWA) piece and all our core networks are anyway SA-ready. But we have no intention to switch on SA now for some time. We have done a long-term deal with Nokia and Ericsson, and over a period of five years, all of this will shift. But nothing on the anvil right now,” the executive said.
Reliance Jio, India’s telecom market leader, is the sole telco that has opted for a 5G SA network – where all its infrastructure or cell sites transmit only 5G signals – from the very outset back in 2022, having invested in efficient but expensive sub-GHz 5G airwaves in the 700 MHz band. Airtel, in contrast, had opted for a non-standalone mode 5G network that uses existing 4G network infrastructure and airwave resources, entailing far less capital expenditure than Jio.
The executive said Airtel still has a lot of traffic on the existing 4G bands. “4G traffic is not growing but 5G is. But unless more and more traffic gets offloaded on the 5G bands, and the spectrum gets released for us (Airtel) to be able to use it for SA … because, for SA, you need spectrum in the mid-band, say 1800 MHz or 2100 MHz band, and therefore, until that happens, we are in no hurry,” the executive said.In any case, there is no benefit that SA provides currently and there are no applications that monetise this technology in any way now, he said. “My suspicion is that in three years, we should start at least in one or two cities where we have a lot of spectrum where the traffic has started coming off. We should start seeing some networks. But people won’t even notice it, there is no difference (between SA and NSA),” the executive said.Airtel didn’t respond to ET emailed queries as of press time Wednesday.
The executive said 5G has yet to generate additional revenue streams for any telco across the world. “…it’s largely just speed … and some FWA (use cases). But you don’t deploy 5G for FWA…the economics don’t work…you use it for mobile, and then you add it as a topping in order to get some monetisation,” the official said.
For tangible monetisation, 5G still needs a lot of applications to be developed for the technology to be truly utilised and create revenue opportunities. “…all those need to be industrial applications. For that, you don’t need ubiquitous networks, you need more bespoke networks,” the executive said.
Vinish Bawa, partner and telecom leader at PwC India, however said that a 5G SA network has various strategic advantages and it is now a critical component of 5G technology, offering faster deployment, improved performance, enhanced security and better quality of service.
