Indian Telcos May Double Investments To Strengthen 5G Network

Indian mobile phone operators are expected to double their investments on 5G network security to target network vulnerabilities or issues.

Indian mobile phone companies are expected to invest at least twice as much in network security with the 5G Experts predicting that rollout will cause a spike in network vulnerabilities. This is especially important for enterprises.

“With 5G it is the first opportunity they (telcos) have to place security at the heart of telecom operations. 

Ruchin Kumar, vice-president, South Asia, stated that this will increase investment to 22.5X what they are doing right now. Futurex – Enterprise-class Data Security Solutions Provider.

A telco’s IT budget includes network security. Currently, telcos invest close to 4-5% in network security (including consumer-facing aspects). Analysts estimate that Indian telcos spend around 5% on IT.

Chetan Jain is the managing director of Inspira Enterprise, a cybersecurity risk management company. He stated,

“We will see between 25-30% of IT budgets dedicated to network security going forward.

They will not only have to protect the network at the backend but will also have to monitor data flow to the consumer end, as it is expected that this will increase 5-10 times after 5G launches.” 

Reliance Jio Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel ET did not respond at press time to questions.

The Internet of Things (IoT)ecosystem, is set to boom with 5G. This will lead to a significant rise in connected devices at work that feed data into the network. Network security will also be crucial to ensure data security at the end user.

This will be more critical as enterprise use cases change in 5G. IoT and Industry “4.0 will involve more sensitive data, so network security must be stepped up,” stated Pareekh Jain, chief executive of EIIRTrend, an engineering research organization.

Although security is an essential aspect of 5G, there are still challenges for telcos. Experts say that the 5G upgrade is fraught with security problems. 

5G cannot be used in conjunction with older-generation networks. Experts say that this requires the addition or replacement of equipment, as well as upgrading or replacing software.

Nishant Bansal (IDC Asia/Pacific senior research manager for telecom), stated that there are two major security concerns related to the transitioning process. 

These are the carryover of existing 3G/4G security issues and the risks associated with equipment from untrusted sources.