Nokia to be ready with 5G deployment in India by 2020

Finnish telecom major Nokia on Monday said it is gearing up to deploy its 5G technology in India by 2020.

Nokia India’s Head of Customer Marketing and Communications Amit Marwah said the 5G technology will transform a wide variety of sectors and impact the daily life.

“From a 5G perspective we can say that Nokia is well poised, both globally and India. We believe that it will happen by the end of 2020,” he told DH.

Nokia has a strong end-to-end 5G portfolio and very successful in testing this across the globe.
“We have started testing it in India too. There are intermediate steps to be taken to make it happen, like the auction of 5G spectrum, regulatory frame work and ecosystem among others,” he said.

According to a recent study by Swedish gear maker Ericsson, 5G mobile services are expected to create an over $27 billion business opportunity for India by 2026.

Marwah also pointed out that Nokia India is engaged with TSDSI (Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India), Department of Telecom, government authorities and chip-set makers like Intel and Qualcomm for the deployment of 5G technology.

“The way in which things are moving ahead are in the right direction and government doesn’t want India to be left behind in technology. We have been deploying 2G, 3G and now 4G. We want 5G deployment without any hassles across the country,” Marwah said.

Nokia India has set up its largest R&D centre in the world with about 6,000 people in Bengaluru.

“We had announced the expansion of R&D for new technologies like cloud, 5G and IoT. We have full-fledged team working on 5G R&D out of India. We also have set up a 5G lab in Bengaluru,” Marwah stated.

Nokia is working with all major communications service providers (CSPs) in the country for 5G deployment. “We have signed two MoUs with BSNL and Airtel. We are also working with partner ecosystem and CSPs for 5G,” he said.