5G India 2019 brings together India’s telecom industry leaders

The first day of the 3rd edition of the 5G India 2019 International Conference and Exhibition kicked off in Mumbai on 26 June 2019. This definitive platform brought together India’s telecom industry leaders, top-level executives, decision makers and telecom analysts under one umbrella to discuss the issues and opportunities related to the deployment of 5G, high-speed digital applications, and how such a technology could usher the country into ‘New India’. The event was organised by BE Expositions Pvt. Ltd. which constantly strives for being the finest organiser of focused IT Telecom events in the country.

5G would be an important event of India’s drive to create smart cities, smart agriculture and transform highways and transportation. Railways which are now demanding high-speed quality communications for control and signalling of trains, as well as high capacity communications for passengers, will also be a driver for the development of 5G technology.

After the inauguration of the 5G Exhibition by Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, chairman, TSDSI & Director, IIT Madras, followed the CXO Round Table, the main attraction of the event, which covered Key 5G Learnings from past 12 months – Global Trials including India, was chaired by Adrian Scarse, CTO, ETSI. The bigwigs of the industry who are involved in every step of mobile broadband deployment from network strategy to service delivery and those who believe that India has the potential to emerge as a leader in 5G standardization, included the following speakers: Shyam Prabhakar Mardikar, Group CTO - Mobility, Reliance Jio; Andreas Sommer, team leader and senior technical advisor, India-EU Cooperation on ICT-Related Standardisation, Policy and Legislation; Ravi Gandhi, chief regulatory officer, Bharti Airtel; Danielle Royston, CEO, Optiva Inc; Tim Ti, CEO and director, UTStarcom Inc.; Parag Kar, VP, Government Affairs, India and SA, Qualcomm; Pradeep Bhardwaj, senior strategy director and head, Industry Standards, Syniverse; Pamela Kumar, director General, TSDSI and Task Force Chair, Application and Use Case labs, 5GHLF; Ravi Shankar Rai, managing director, Savitri Group; Koo Eng Wei, director of technology – CTO Office at VIAVI Solutions; Amit Marwah, head of marketing and corporate affairs, Nokia India.

Vishant Vora, director – technology, Vodafone Idea Limited, while agreeing with Danielle Royston, CEO, Optiva Inc, on virtualisation said, “Virtualisation is fairly common now. In our case, i.e. Vodafone Idea, more than 50% of our packet core capacity is on the cloud.”

The Theme for the second day of the mega event 5G 2019: The Catalyst to Digital Revolution in India, was introduced by TV Ramachandran, president, Broadband India Forum and chairman, 5G India conference committee. In his opening statement, Ramachandran said: “I am elated to see such a noteworthy presence of the audience with one and all from the telecom industry. We are all awaiting the quick arrival of 5G as it will not only curb the speed issues but also will engage various industries and bind them together. This is just the beginning, as soon as 5G is in, we will work towards our next big goal of welcoming 6G to the country.”

“We should not miss the bus’, said Anshu Prakash, IAS, additional secretary (T) Department of Telecommunications Govt of India while he was emphasizing, how significant is the entry of 5G in India. India has a huge potential with great brains. Going forward 5G will be an important application as it clearly stands out to be the best solution for the socio-economic upliftment of the country.”

The post-lunch sessions witnessed thought-provoking topics like: How 5G can play a crucial role in Agriculture, Healthcare, Smart Cities and other industries’ growth in India?; The 5G Success in India: A Collaborative and Systems Approach to Innovation; How the 5G revolution will drive future innovations of IoT; How to design a strategy that will allow end-to-end security for critical services such as transport and logistics, health and social care, industry 4.0 and rural connectivity solutions.

The telco’s can now make best use of 5G for cross-industry applications and digital transformation and operators can manage the cost of unbridled traffic growth and exploit opportunities to capture sufficient revenues and generate a return on their 5G infrastructure investments.