IMC 2018: 5G Highlights And Use Cases

IMC 2018, India Mobile Congress, kicked off last Thursday at New Delhi with demonstrations of the potential of 5G technology in India and how it will shape our lives. It has come up with a lot of intriguing use cases and announcements that will blow your mind. If you want to know why you need it, you can follow our previous blog.

The top three telecom operators in India — Vodafone-Idea, Airtel, and Jio are racing to create a never seen before vision of India, that would put us at the forefront of countries ready for 5G.

“When it comes to 5G, it’s common for all. The whole industry will go towards 5G,” says Nitin Bansal, managing director at Ericsson.

Jio and Ericsson

Indian telecom upstart, Reliance Jio, and Swedish company Ericsson presented their jointly developed demo at the IMC 2018. The demonstration comprised a 5G connected driverless car and a VR-enabled bus.

“The use cases demonstrated at the event over the live 5G network in Navi Mumbai and in Delhi leveraged the gigabit speed and ultra-low latency capabilities of 5G to exemplify key benefits such as the remote operation of machines (robotic arms, vehicles) and possibilities enabled through virtual reality (VR)”, said Mr Bansal in a statement.

The 5G enabled car was developed in collaboration with IIT-Delhi. “It demonstrates remote operation and control of a car that is connected over a live 5G network on 3.5 GHz (gigahertz) band at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. The use case was made accessible at the IMC for remote driving and showcasing assistance through 5G edge computing. 5G’s reliability, high data rate capability and low latency — key elements for remote operations of machines.”

The bus was driven with the help of a VR enabled headset and a camera mounted on top of the bus, streaming through 5G. The streaming was done on Jio’s high-speed 5G network in Navi Mumbai.

Low latency and ultra high-speed capabilities that will unleash their newly attained potential in the near future will also make work under challenging circumstances possible. It can be used in mines, manufacturing, etc or where there is a danger to human lives.

Huawei and Airtel

China’s tech giant Huawei partnered with Airtel and showcased some great innovations of 5G at IMC 2018. They conducted an Augmented Reality (AR) Holographic Communication using a 5G New Radio (NR) non-standalone architecture(NSA), showcasing their achievements at the event.

It will enable users to communicate with a live 3D hologram, a thing of ‘the future’. “Having partnered India in its 4G revolution, the 5G demos are the next step in bringing world-class technologies and solutions to India, helping operators enable 5G network deployments, explore possible use cases and facilitate business success,” Jay Chen, CEO, Huawei India said.

“With our 5G demonstrations in partnership with Indian operators, (Bharti Airtel) we would like to involve everyone in the process, and give India a glimpse of the digital future,” Chen added

The latest AR technology can be used in learning, training, gaming, entertainment and live events. It needs a high bandwidth data with low latency.

“Ubiquitous high-speed networks will open doors to a digital world that will be full of exciting digital innovations. Having conducted India’s first in-lab 5G test with Huawei, we are delighted to extend our partnership to demonstrate cutting-edge AR and VR (virtual reality) based use cases for 5G,” said Randeep Sekhon, Chief Technology Officer, Bharti Airtel.

Huawei is under the process of aligning China-band with India specific 5G spectrum bands, to provide end to end solutions. From devices to base stations, to 5G transport, 5G core and chips. Huawei is also planning to launch their 5G-ready Kirin chip and 5G-enabled smartphone in India by next year.

Role of Samsung

“We will start India 5G trials in New Delhi,” Srini Sundararajan, Senior Vice President and Head of Networks Business at Samsung India. Samsung is planning to start its first large-scale 5G trials in collaboration with the Department of Telecommunication (DoT), in the first quarter of 2019.

“Once the country decides on the use cases, we will have all other equipment including the devices necessary for those specific use cases ready,” Sundararajan said. It will transform various sectors like healthcare, education, disaster management and agriculture. It will lead to accelerated growth of GDP.

“5G is a complete ecosystem. Its adoption will not completely replace 4G. The television talking to the refrigerator and the refrigerator talking to the microwave will be a reality in a few years from now,” Sundararajan said.

With the successful development of the first commercial Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) based 5G modems and mmWave Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit (RFIC), the company has been manufacturing compact-sized 5G radio, router devices and Customer Premises Equipment (CPE).

Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and SK Telecom have selected Samsung for both 4G and 5G solutions and services.

In India, the company is a chief provider of network infrastructure for Reliance Jio which has successfully built a large mobile network in the country within a short period of time. The Jio-Samsung 4G LTE network handles over 90 petabytes of data traffic every day, equivalent to 600 billion photographs shared on social media in a day. “Jio was built for 5G. It is a complete IP network and will mostly require software upgrades to update the network,” Sundararajan said.

Samsung’s solutions traverse network equipment, devices and chipsets. It will lead to a technologically precocious version of our country.

Nokia’s comeback

Nokia, India’s former most trusted brand in terms of handsets, had a ping pong ball balanced on three tiny robots connected to 4G and 5G networks. It was basically a smart way of showing the difference between 4G and 5G latency. While using the 4G network, the robots were a little slow but when the network was switched to 5G, it showed a significant increase in speed of moving the robots in order to reach the right balance much faster.

Use Cases

Autonomous cars and 5G

Reliance Jio and Ericsson’s demo of the driverless car and VR enabled bus driving, which was streamed via Jio’s 5G network, shown in the IMC 2018, revolutionised the notion of digital India.

It showed the true potential of 5G with 10gbps of speed, in comparison to what we use right now -10mbps, it offered low latency and high efficiency.

Smartpur

A setup inside a tiny bamboo hut that displays how Nokia and DEF(Digital Empowerment Foundation) India are helping small villages in major ways. There are hundreds of villages across the country where they are helping to provide basic health care and facilities. Smartpur has six pillars — healthcare, education, finance, entertainment, life skills and governance.

There are micro-ATM’s which can be installed in small shops for online non-cash transactions. Medical equipment that reads and records a person’s data which is sent to professionals who give feedback and consultations regularly.

Smartpur is an entrepreneurial setup that Nokia and DEF India create for local communities for free, to train them for it, and then franchise it to local villages, still offering them guidance (if they need). With this, they are able to create employment, as well as offer some crucial infrastructure in these areas.

Drones in emergencies

On day-one at IMC 2018, there was a video played that showed drones stepping up the game.

These drones that can be activated with a click through an app, they can come and asses an emergency situation and an operator will be there to guide you in case of an emergency. They can talk to you in real time.

In the case of an accident, they can scan the number plate of the vehicle, identify the owner and inform their emergency contacts. In case of medical emergencies, it can request an ambulance be sent over urgently.

Is India ready for 5G?

While these companies are eagerly racing to get the most advanced 5G in India to most people, are we actually ready for it?

“I think all of us together have the obligation to make the market ready otherwise the market will not come prepared saying hey I’m ready now, deploy 5G,” Nitin Bansal says. “It’s a stepped approach, the industry, telecom companies, and academia need to work together to create that part” But Sundararajan of Samsung believes that 5G will co-exist with 4G for quite some time. “In my personal view, we are all ready, but we may not be ready in a nationwide scenario. It may be certain use cases that drive the initial journey,” he adds.

One thing is for sure — the 5G future is going to be exciting. Machines will talk to other machines, automated vehicles, smart cities etc. and at super high speeds. Field testing of 5G will commence from the first half of 2019 and smartphones and laptops will be 5G ready by 2020.

IMC 2018 is all about showcasing to India the 5G future that is coming and all its use cases. It acts as a catalyst in building demand for 5G future and tells us which providers will supply the next generation technology soon in India. With India becoming one of the largest early 5G markets, the entire world will be watching what happens here.