On October 1-4, 2022, the 6th edition of India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2022 held at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi (Delhi) which was organized by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) of Ministry of Communications, and Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) on the theme ‘New digital Universe’.
- It was inaugurated by the Prime Minister (PM) of India Narendra Modi.
Participants:
The 6th IMC saw the participation of 362 speakers, 13,500 participants in 80 sessions and over 1.07 lakh visitors including 7000 government officials from 150 PSUs and various other departments, 10 union ministers, 17 state ministers, 30 thousand students, and others. 239 stalls, and 1811 exhibitors. The key dignitaries include the following:
- Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, Ministry of Communications
- Union Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoH&FW)
- Union Minister Piyush Goyal, Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI)
- Union Minister Pralhad Joshi, Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs
- Chairman & Managing Director Mukesh Ambani, Reliance Industries
- CEO Sunil Bharti Mittal, Bharti Enterprises
- Chairperson Kumar Mangalam Birla, Aditya Birla Group
PM launched indigenous 5G NSA Core designed and developed by C-DOT
The PM launched the 5G (5th Generation) Non-Standalone (NSA) Core, indigenously designed and developed by the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) at C-DOT pavilion at IMC 2022.
- This tech was developed with an annual budget of Rs 400 crore and with small team of 200 working exclusively on 4G/5G.
- C-DOT is the Telecom R&D (Research and Development) center of DoT, Ministry of Communications. Its Executive Director & Chairman is Dr. Rajkumar Upadhyay.
Demonstrations:
i.It was demonstrated through end-to-end 5G call using C-DOT 5G NSA Core installed at BSNL Chandigarh and 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) developed indigenously in collaboration with Wisig Networks, VVDN Technologies and Radisys India Pvt Ltd.
ii.Use cases were demonstrated by three major telecom operators of India viz. Reliance Jio, Airtel, Vodafon Idea.
iii.There were various use cases that were demonstrated including precision drone-based farming; High-Security Routers & AI based Cyber Threat Detection platforms; Automated Guided Vehicles; Ambupod – Smart Ambulance; extending remote medical assistance, among others.
iv.C-DOT also live demonstrated its diverse Telecom products and solutions including Optical Communication, Switching & Routing Systems, Wireless Communication – WiFi, 4G & 5G, Cyber Security, Quantum Communication, Network Management and a host of Telecom software applications based on IoT (Internet of things)/M2M (Machine to Machine), AI (Artificial Intelligence)/ML (Machine Learning), AR (Augmented Reality)/ Virtual reality (VR) and Big Data.
PM launches first phase of 5G services in 13 cities
PM also launched the first phase of 5G services in 13 Indian cities of Delhi, Gurugram (Haryana), Mumbai (Maharashtra), Pune (Maharashtra), Kolkata (West Bengal), Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh), Bengaluru (Karnataka), Chandigarh, Ahmedabad (Gujarat), Gandhinagar (Gujarat), Chennai (Tamil Nadu), Hyderabad (Telangana), Jamnagar (Gujarat).
Bharti Airtel has become the first company to launch 5G services in the country
Bharti Airtel has become the first telecom company to launch 5G services in India.
From October 8, 2022, its 5G services will be available in eight cities of Delhi, Varanasi (UP), Nagpur (Maharashtra), Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai and Siliguri (West Bengal).
- The Pan India roll out of these services will be by March 2024.
Key Points:
i.Bharti Airtel recently acquired 19,867.8 MHZ (megahertz) spectrum in 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 3300 MHz and 26 GHz (Gigahertz) bands worth Rs 43,084 crore in the auction.
- It had placed the order for 5G gears with Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung.
ii.On the other hand, Reliance Industries’ Jio will roll out 5G services in India by December 2023.
- Jio 5G will be the world’s largest and most advanced 5G network.
- It will launch 5G services in four metro cities — Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai in the beginning.
Lava unveiled its first ‘affordable’ 5G smartphone, Blaze 5G.
Indigenous electronics maker Lava unveiled the 5G variant of its Blaze smartphone at IMC 2022, namely Lava Blaze 5G worth Rs 10,000 which is set to become the most affordable 5G smartphone in India.
- It will be available for pre-booking around Diwali.
Specifications:
i.The smartphone is Powered by MediaTek Dimensity 700 processor, and 5,000 mAh battery.
ii.It will be compatible with eight 5G bands in India.
iii.It boots Android 12 operating system with an anonymous call-recording feature built-in.
iv.It is Widevine L1 certified.
v.The company will also provide ‘free service at home’ service to the customer as a good after-sales experience.
Govt to set up 100 5G labs in India
Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced the setting up of 100 5G labs across India. He also invited comments for the draft of the Indian Telecommunication Bill, 2022.
- He urged the telecom industry to collaborate and convert at least 12 of these 100 labs into telecom incubators to train students and do experiments.
Key Point:
- During the IMC 2022, PD Vaghela, Chairman of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), unveiled the ‘5G Lab-as-a-Service’ of Indigenous telecom gear maker HFCL.
- The 5G Lab will offer automated test environments to the private sector, government, and academia to work on 5G solutions and services.
MoS Pralhad Joshi launches security solution QoSec for mining sector
The Minister of State (MoS) Pralhad Joshi, Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs launched QoSec Mining Solutions at IMC 2022. It is developed by Sensoris,machine to machine service provider (M2MSP) .
- It is unique solution that will securely encrypt the data from any tracking devices using an intelligent applet programme.
- CEO of Sensorise – Manish Khare
Reason behind the launch:
The contentious effort to push fake data from a rogue device or a rogue server to hide the transit pilferage has been a serious threat towards effective monitoring in any mineral transportation monitoring solution. Now, the security design of this solution will keeps the data private and safe from hacking and cyber-attacks by end-to-end encryption and decryption of the data.
BSNL to launch 4G:
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) will launch 4G networks from November 2022. The Tata-Group-backed consortium is working together with BSNL to deploy homegrown 4G as soon as possible.
- It will also launch 5G services on August 15, 2023.
- This consortium is led by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), where technologies from C-DOT, TCS, and Tejas Networks were utilised to conduct proof of concept (POC) in the BSNL network. C-DOT’s 4G core was deployed along with RAN from Tejas Networks.
It should be noted that Tejas Networks has won the “Best Made in India Telecom Innovation” award at IMC 2022. The company won the award for its ultra-converged broadband networking product, TJ1400 UCB that has been fully designed, developed and manufactured in India.
- CEO & MD of Tejas Networks – Mr. Sanjay Nayak
Others:
i.The IMC include sessions titled ‘New Digital Universe’, ‘Decoding the potential of Digital Bharat’, ‘Skilling India for new 5G paradigm, Towards 5G and Advanced 6G- an international conference, ‘Global CEO Conclave: Steering India to the new digital universe,’ ‘Global CTO Conclave: Building a connected ecosystem for next Techade’ and many others.
ii.There are only a few major vendors in the 5G network business from select countries — Nokia (Finland), Ericsson (Sweden), ZTE and Huawei (China) and Samsung (South Korea).
iii.Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw proposed the global launch of IMC, and urged to set up a committee to come up with a roadmap and format in the next 30 days.
About 5G:
The 5G internet connection is expected to be faster than the 4G internet. It provides high data rate, seamless coverage, highly reliable communications and low latency during internet usage. It will further increase energy efficiency, network efficiency and spectrum efficiency,
About IMC:
IMC under the Company Mobipro Innovation Pvt. Ltd. is the largest telecom, media, and technology forum in Asia which discusses, deliberates, demonstrates and displays the latest technology, media, and telecom (TMT), and ICT (Information & Communication Technology). Following are the objectives of the IMC Platform:
- Promoting Local Manufacturing
- Fostering International Regional Cooperation
- Inspiring Inclusive & Sustainable Development
- Promoting Entrepreneurship & Innovation
- Driving Foreign Local Investmentsing
- Pushing for Greater Number of Technology Exports
- Facilitating Supportive Regulatory & Policy Frameworks
- Encouraging R&D in the Telecom & Technology Sectors
Static Points about 5G:
i.5G is a successor of 4G
ii.T-Mobile US was the 1st company in the world to launch a commercially available 5G NR (New Radio) Standalone network.
iii.In 2019, South Korea became the first country to commercially launch nationwide 5G services
iv.In March 2019, the Global Mobile Suppliers Association released the industry’s first database tracking worldwide 5G device launches.
v.On March 6, 2020, the first-ever all-5G smartphone Samsung Galaxy S20 was released.
vi.Following are the generations:
First generation – 1G
1980s: 1G delivered analog voice.
Second generation – 2G
Early 1990s: 2G introduced digital voice (e.g. CDMA– Code Division Multiple Access).
Third generation – 3G
Early 2000s: 3G brought mobile data (e.g. CDMA2000).
Fourth generation – 4G LTE
2010s: 4G LTE ushered in the era of mobile broadband.
