When the company has been banned by the US plus the US enforcing sanctions against countries that does business with this specific company, the Indian telecom giant has gone ahead with the so-called controversial Chinese tech giant Huawei to test its 5G ambitions in India. The network backhaul is being strengthened by deploying MIMO (massive input massive output) that can transmit data at the speed of 1Gbps. This infrastructure is of paramount importance when it comes to 5G standards as 5G technology demands nil latency or close to nil latency. With the current infrastructure being used no telecom service provider is more technologically superior than Reliance Jio. Jio has invested around ~$37 billion and is yet not undone. Its network calibration is the most advanced and the fiber backhaul has the highest pan India coverage at around ~250,000 km and expanding which is not even the cumulative fiber coverage of the incumbents. This has added pressure on Airtel that is upgrading its network and making it future ready for the launch of 5G in India.
Airtel is the closest rival of the new player and is also investing in spectrum refarming to utilize it for 4G network deployment, network decongestion, and capacity addition. Many telecom gears are gearing for the launch of 5G in India and are busy testing with their association with Indian telecom vendors. Companies like Nokia, Ericson, Samsung, and Huawei are in the fray to get a major chunk of orders from the telecom providers. The investment in 5G for the incumbents is quite exorbitant and the use case in India for the years ahead is yet not clear. This is the reason for testbeds to be deployed in an incubated area for inclusive and extensive trails. Huawei has a lot of pressure to establish its niche in the Indian market. But with the Indian government along with public sentiments like the leaders from the right-wing organization with businesses flagging concerns over Ren Zhengfei’s close proximity with the Chinese government and the Chinese army.
Well, Huawei considers itself the technological leader when it comes to telecom equipment and gears, and why not so? It has already started investing in the 6G services with R&D and the roadmap of the company being clear. While the world and US allies are boycotting and the Chinese firm is fighting its own battle to establish and secure its market share. Ren Zhenfei himself has said that the company is willing to license all of its 5G technology to a US company. He said, “Source code, hardware, software, and the verification, production and manufacturing know-how, all of these are included in the package. And if they need it, we can also license the design of the chipsets”. Call it desperation or aggression to go all out, this has intensified the 5G race and is adding pressure on telecom companies, telecom equipment manufacturers like Nokia, Ericson, and Samsung to raise their game and offerings. This has made things interesting on the customer front and it’s rather a delight to be a consumer of this tech world at the end of this decade.
