India’s IT firms are drawing up plans to use their campuses spread across the country to create private 5G testbeds and build solutions that can be implemented with their clients globally, industry executives said.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the country’s largest IT services firm, will build private 5G networks in its campuses over the next six months, while engineering services provider L&T Technology Services (LTTS) has already established a 5G lab in Bengaluru and is preparing to launch another lab in Mysuru for use cases in medical equipment and manufacturing solutions.
Tech Mahindra, which earns nearly half of its revenue from telecom business and serves customers such as AT&T and BT Plc, has also signed up chip maker Arm to set up an Arm 5G lab. The Mahindra Group IT firm has a 5G test bed with Rakuten in Tokyo.
The companies are awaiting 5G licences to be issued and spectrum be allocated to start running these trials with telecom operators. “We are partnering with telcos to build 5G mobile private networks (MPNs),” said Kamal Bhadada, business group head, communications, media and information services, at TCS.
“I am hopeful in the next six months we will have something running live on a couple of our campuses.”
Mobile private 5G networks use licensed, shared, or wireless spectrum and LTE or 5G cellular networking base stations, small cells, and other Radio Access Network (RAN) infrastructure to transmit voice and data to edge devices like smartphones, IoT devices and routers among others.
“We are experimenting right now with the government because we need some licensed spectrum to try it out,” Bhadada said. “And then, of course, we have to partner with the telcos to make sure we get the radio and all the capability together.”
With more than 90% employees still working from home, TCS is also waiting for campuses to have enough footfalls for full-fledged 5G services to start.
