Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s top information technology company, wants the government to allocate the 5G spectrum directly to private enterprises.
“Private networks or enterpriser will enable organisations to accelerate their IoT (Internet of Things) and digitalisation agenda,” TCS’s chief operating officer, N Ganapathy Subramaniam said. “For this to happen in a secure manner and with a greater degree of control on their own data, the government must consider allocating appropriate spectrum directly to enterprises for building private networks without any dependency on telcos and full freedom to unleash the potential for Industry 4.0 transformation” he added to his statement.
This makes Tata Consultancy stands against other telecom operators such as Reliance Jio Infocomm and Bharti Airtel, who want airwaves to be auctioned to licenced entities.
Infosys, India’s second-largest software development company, plans to lease a 5G spectrum in the key market to deploy a private network for large enterprise customers. Leading companies like Wipro and Tech Mahindra said that they are also looking to partner with carriers and companies as the firms seek to participate in next-gen technology. Along with these companies, HCL Technologies added huge opportunities for industries to leverage the next-gen technology.
Countries like Germany, Spain, Finland, UK, US, France, Sweden, South Korea, Malaysia, Australia, Czech Republic, Japan, France, Hong Kong and Taiwan have embarked on the spectrum for private networks in the mid-band (3.3-3.67) and 28 GHz, millimetre wave band, said Subramaniam. If bandwidth is allocated to the private firms, enterprises can choose the services or system integrators to build applications on the 5G technologies of private networks, he added.
Now the government is planning to auction the 5G spectrum in the 600 MHz, 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 18 MHz, 2100 MHz, 23 MHz, 3.3-3.67 GHz and 24.25-27.5 GHz bands possibly in July and ring in the first 5G call is expected to come in the August-September timeframe.
