It looks like this may finally be the end for any form of home-grown version of 5G in India – even one merged with standards body the 3rd Generation Partnership Project's (3GPP) global 5G standard. The country’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has now apparently decided to abandon 5Gi, as the local standard is known.
According to Indian news reports this follows opposition from telecommunications companies worried about compatibility issues involving 3GPP's 5G and India's 5Gi. There would also have been testing, equipment, manufacturing and software costs involved.
Now The Telecommunications Standards Development Society India (TSDSI) has told the Telecommunication Engineering Centre (TEC), which operates under the DoT, not to go ahead with the adoption of 5Gi as a national 5G standard.
The TSDSI, formerly seen as a supporter of the standard, said in a statement that it will continue to follow global 5G standards as local standards and “does not intend to further update 5Gi specifications”.
We reported late last year that TEC, which had long been unhappy with the 5Gi concept, and DoT had agreed to the merger of 5Gi with 3GPP’s global 5G standard – with specific milestones set for both 3GPP and TSDSI.
3GPP said: “There are technical and logistical requirements for achieving the merger of the two branches." It suggested that once it had received communication regarding the completion of the pertinent actions by TSDSI, any changes endorsed could become part of the specifications.
This, presumably, is no longer an issue, a relief to the many operators and vendors unhappy with the idea of an Indian 5G standard.
