Finnish telecom equipment maker Nokia said it is working with Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea (Vi) in 5G field trials. Nokia’s chief strategy and technology officer Nishant Batra said by 2023, it expects to bring in advanced 5G solutions
“We have active engagements with Bharti, VI, and Jio for 5G field trials and have made several public announcements on the milestones achieved. It will open up new possibilities that will have a massive impact on society, industry, and consumers in India…in the coming years and beyond the 5G era,” said Batra at India Mobile Congress on Wednesday.
These comments come on the back of the telecom sector gearing up for 5G auctions in April-May 2022 and the three private players using government spectrum to conduct field trials.
“By the end of 2023, we expect to see release 18 of 3GPP…or as we prefer to call it: 5G-Advanced. This version of the 5G evolution will develop 5G to its fullest capabilities and is an important stepping-stone to the new interactive use cases we will see on a large scale in the coming 6G era,” he added.
Telcos so far have highlighted that 5G use cases can bring in transformation in healthcare, agriculture, education-related areas.
Batra also gave a glimpse of how human-technology interfaces will change in the future and the internet used via smartphones will be “less exciting”.
“By 2030, we expect two of the biggest drivers of network evolution will be human augmentation and digital/physical fusion. Consumer broadband will still be the biggest service, and video will still drive the bulk of Internet traffic,” he added. India is one of the biggest data guzzlers. “Practically speaking, digital/physical fusion means that by 2030 every physical thing that makes sense to connect digitally will be connected to the Internet,” he added.
The company which has its “Conscious Factory” in Chennai is betting big on machine learning, automation, cloud services, and automation. “As enterprises, governments and networks invest in their digital transformations, Nokia is well-positioned to provide the critical networking solutions they need,” Batra added.
