India urged to embrace 4G

Experts advise India to move forward in setting up a
4G forum that can provide insights into the country’s
needs and capabilities in the area of 4G telecom
networks. 
Monday, March 29, 2004 

http://www.ciol.com/content/news/2004/104032906.asp
 
NEW DELHI: Funded by the European Commission, the
EuroIndia2004 Co-operation Forum on the Information
Society was the fourth in a series of international
co-operation events to showcase the European vision on
Information Society Technologies (IST) and enrich it
further through international cooperation with a
country like India. 

The three-day (March 24 to 26) event attracted
industry and academic participation from India,
Denmark, Italy and other EU countries. It also offered
a pan-European dimension with participants from over
40 countries including a number of SMEs, highlighting
their innovations, technologies, applications and
products. The event saw the participation of 300
European and 650 Indian delegates, with SMEs and
academic researchers forming the bulk of the
participants

UMTS as the right choice 

Speaking on the topic of mobile communication at
EuroIndia 2004 – Jean-Pierre Bienaime, UMTS (Universal
Mobile Telecommunications System) Forum said that UMTS
is the right choice for telecom operators moving
towards 3G.

"At a time when GSM operators have invested heavily on
creation of telecom infrastructure, UMTS provides them
with a capability to leverage on the existing
infrastructure. In the process they can save
operational costs and upgrade their networks as well,"
he added.

On a worldwide scenario GSM has exceeded the one
billion - customer mark and around 15 million new
customers are being added every month on a global
basis. "As of now there are than 620 GSM operators
that are providing services in more than 200
countries, so GSM as a standard is well accepted in
the telecom markets," he added.

While not much of India’s population has been able to
connect itself to the telecom networks, on the other
hand it translates into a situation where is enough
potential for a number of players to provide the
connectivity in bridging the digital divide.

"India as a country has got immense potential. Lower
cost and wider deployment are key to success in a
country like India. And we already are witnessing a
cellular explosion in terms of customers in the
country. UMTS is designed as an end-to-end mobile
system and it provides network optimization, it is
cheaper and also provides medium to long-term increase
in revenues for the operators. All these factors will
push its adoption in a country like India," he
explained.

At present there are more than 3 million customers for
3G/UMTS worldwide and a number of telecom operators in
Europe, Asia and US are testing their networks to
provide 3G applications. In all 15 operators in Europe
and Asia like T-Mobile, NTT and Vodafone have forayed
into this technology. "Before the end of 2004 there
are about a dozen operators venturing into this
technology," he added. 

"Operators like NTT DoCoMo (more than 2 million) and
Vodafone (0.5 million) are quite upbeat about this
technology and are on their way to provide an array of
services and applications on this technology. UMTS
forum predicts that by the end of 2004, we would be
having more than 15 million customers using this
technology and 50 per cent of that customer base would
reside in Europe and the rest in the Asian region," he
explained. 

He went on to say that - moving forward 3G or UMTS can
help Indian mobile operators to future proof their
existing investment in GSM infrastructure.

Speaking at a session on IT security and data
protection at EuroIndia – M Vidyasagar, Executive Vice
President (Advanced Technology), e-security practice
for TCS informed that there is a need to detect a
security breach of security policy.

"A lot of organizations do not know that before there
is a breach of security, there is a breach of security
policy. So they should be more worried about the
breach of security policy and not the security
itself," he added.

At a time when bugs and viruses keep complex networks
on its toes, industry needs to evolve proper metrics
to measure security at the policy level. "No one can
guarantee perfect security. So companies should evolve
their security policy in such a way so as to address
this issue properly," he explained. 

Forum for 4G in India needed

Expressing the importance of having a 4G forum for the
country, Jorge M Pereira, European Commission,
Information Society Directorate General said that
India should move forward in having a 4G forum that
can provide insights into the country’s needs and
capabilities in the area of fourth generation telecom
networks.

"This forum when formed, can address issues like R&D
in 4G technologies, educating the industry about 4G,
expanding wireless with an increase in demand,
seamless mobility and utilizing technologies of higher
frequency spectrum," Pereira added.

India as a country has got a big talent pool in terms
of educational institutions and research organizations
and this can help the country in early adoption of
technologies like 4G. "India is very good in terms of
talent, so the country can provide the talent manpower
needed in the areas of computing infrastructure,
signal processing, backbone networks, multiple access
technologies, channel coding and VLSI," informed, Prof
Shankar Lall Maskara from Indian Institute of
Technology, Kharagpur. 

Creation of such forum will boost the chances of India
moving towards cutting edge technologies like 3G and
4G. "Establishment of 4G forum is essential for the
country now. In fact I am going to meet up with the
government of India representatives and very soon we
will have this forum functioning as a body," said,
Ramjee Prasad, Director, Center for TeleInFrastruktur
(CTIF), Aalborg University, Denmark.

The Spectrum dilemma

Even though, not much of an adoption has happened in
the area of 3G, the government of India is quite sure
of moving forward with its 4G plans. "There is a big
thrust going in for 4G and the government is fully
committed to make sure that 4G adoption happens within
8 to 10 years time frame," said, PK Garg, Wireless
Advisor to the government of India, Ministry of
Communications & IT.

"So as we move forward we will have to allocate
spectrum for 4G operations and applications as well.
At the same time, we will have to increase the
increase the efficiency of spectrum usage. We will
have to create dynamic situations where co-existence
of existing infrastructure is possible with the
futuristic one," he added.

At a time when wireless technologies like Wi-Fi and
WiMAX are being introduced in various parts of the
country, spectrum allocation continues to be a topic
of concern with the industry. 

"We have to allocate spectrum for more than 40
different radio frequency services like – security
agencies, aerospace mobile services, maritime mobile
services. Over the years, there has been an increase
in high data rate and with that the spectrum
requirement have also increased to quite an extent,"
he added.

Speaking on the issue of spectrum management he said
that there is a need for proper management of spectrum
for the rural and urban areas of the country. "There
is a difference in the need pattern for rural and the
urban populace, so we cant provide similar
applications to rural as well as the urban segments.
Spectrum management is the only answer to this," he
added.

He also informed that the government is in the process
of reviewing national frequency allocation plan and
the final plan is likely to be rolled out very soon.
"We are taking proposals from different segments of
the society as well as the industry. The final plan
will be out very soon and it will address all the
issues related to spectrum allocation," he informed.

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