‘India Is Not Ready For 5G Era: Shashi Tharoor’

Last updated on February 9th, 2021 at 06:33 am

India is not ready to enter the 5G era according to a panel headed by Congress  MP Shashi Tharoor, who has concluded that “sufficient preparatory work has not been undertaken for a successful launch.”

Tharoor is heading a parliamentary panel on information technology, and has blamed the current government for its laidback approach to the whole launch exercise.  The initial date for the rollout was the beginning of 2022.

In fact, India is quite behind its preparations in comparison to other nations of the world.

The other concerns flagged by the parliamentary committee include spectrum issues and, uncertainty around the sale of radio waves for 5G.  A detailed report has listed out other issues as “high spectrum prices, poor development of use cases, low status of fiberization, non-uniform RoW {right of way} issues, deficient backhaul capacity, etc. as some of the factors coming in the way of rolling out of 5G services in India.”

 As far as spectrum needs is concerned, concerned officials have reassured that this issue will soon be resolved. India has been keen to catch up with the rest of the world and become a more proactive country supporting the 5G revolution. 

But according to the committee, this is not going to be possible, unless the centre can find quick solutions to get the ball rolling. 

The report further sheds light on India’s deployment delays in each stage of spectrum development.  According to Ravi Shankar Prasad, Electronics and Information Technology minister, as of the end of January, it is confirmed that the testbed for the next-generation technology was ready and India would be using indigenously made telecom equipment. The minister further has confirmed that the government would soon grant a permit for the 5G trials.

According to the Department of Telecommunication, 5G would be rolled out from the existing 4G core itself and then developed further. 

Ironically, India has still not started the auction of radio waves for 5G spectrum. Mukesh Ambani Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. Is the only company that is a confident player in the spectrum game. 

According to the report, there is also the threat of cybersecurity. India will have to up its game when it comes to handling the new way of hacking termed as STRIDE. In the acronym, S stands for Spoofing, T stands for Tampering, R stands for Repudiation, I for information disclosure, D for denial of service making the network unavailable when it is needed, and E for what they call the escalation of privileges. 

With this regard, the Committee has factored-in the Personal Data Protection Bill-2019, which is still under consideration of the Government and will deal with various data security issues. Nevertheless, it has recommended that indigenous intellectual property rights, equipment, and software should be encouraged and developed.