5G Updates: Jio 5G-SA vs Airtel-Vi 5G-NSA, Netcon-Athonet, Jio's 5G Ambulance

India's 5G goes mainstream as Jio and Airtel two of four telecom service providers have launched their 5G commercial services. But there is another excitement awaiting with 5G - that's private 5G networks. Adani Data Networks is the single company in the country who will launch only private 5G, while Jio, Airtel and Vi are capable of launching private 5G as the trio have acquired spectrum in 26GHz band. 

Private 5G networks are the latest excitement to the industry, as it would support Indian enterprises preparing for the Industry 4.0 revolution.

Home grown smaller IT infrastructure and digital solutions providers are working to bring their own private 5G solutions. In October 2022, Chennai based Netcon Technologies (https://netcontechnologies.com) has launched Private 5G solutions in collaboration with Italy based Athonet (https://athonet.com). The solutions were unveiled at the recently concluded India Mobile Congress 2022 in New Delhi. 

Athonet is an award-winning technology provider with more than 15 years of expertise delivering reliable, secure, and flexible private mobile networks. Under the partnership with Italy-based Athonet, Netcon will offer Athonet’s Private 5G/LTE solutions in the Indian, ASEAN, and MENA (Middle East and North Africa) markets. For private mobile networks (PMNs) Athonet has created 5G Consortium (https://5gconsortium.com)

“Athonet & Netcon will jointly work together to provide innovative private 5G solutions for solving industry use cases.  Netcon’s strong presence, technology capabilities, System Integration and managed services will provide us a great platform for addressing the enterprise market,” said Gianluca Verin, CEO of Athonet.

Netcon said that it will offer design, deployment, and management of customized private 5G networks for its client enterprises. The company added that its solutions are designed to support multiple use cases and are targeted at a diverse set of industries, including manufacturing, airports, seaports, healthcare, and mining, among others. 

Netcon also announced the launch of three new products; ChiefNet, Copper and Mavro at the India Mobile Congress 2022. 

ChiefNet is a cloud-native ‘Network-as-a-Service’ platform targeted at enterprises. It allows customers to connect, manage, secure and visualize the their critical IT network infrastructure while giving them flexibility to pay as you go. 

Copper is an omni-channel communication platform for enterprises bundling three features together: A powerful telephony system, a complete customer engagement platform and integration frame work that offers endless customization for every industry. 

Finally, Mavro is a new-age framework that brings together the power of SAP and Web 2.0. It helps enterprises to tightly integrate business processes and web applications with rich User Interface (UI). It is designed to improve productivity, optimize SAP licensing costs and get actionable insights for better business decisions.

Netcon has set up a development team in Coimbatore for developing tools and accelerators for quick deployment and managing private 5G networks, focusing on Industry 4.0. The company employs 400 people, including more than 175 certified technology professionals across its multiple offices in India, Dubai, Singapore and Uganda.

Jio backed 5G Ambulance

On October 4, 2022 Delhi based Medulance Healthcare (medulance.com) has launched a 5G- Smart connected ambulance in association with Reliance Jio. The vehicle is equipped with cameras and smart devices that allow real-time, two-way audio and video communication, high-definition footage transmission, ambulance location tracking, and real-time streaming of patient health data to a distant doctor over the high-speed 5G network.  This helps in alerting the nearest hospital and staff to better manage the patient on arrival and save critical time.

Medulance Healthcare is India's first, Integrated Emergency Response provider with a fleet of 7,500+ ambulances for fast and reliable first-point medical attention, spread across 60+ cities in the country. 

Now coming back to spectrum allocation to India's 4 private telecom players, you can check the details below. 

Company	Expenditure	Spectrum acquired	Cr per MHz
Airtel	Rs 43,084Cr	19,867.8 MHz	2.16
Reliance Jio	Rs 88,078 Cr	24,740 MHz	3.56
Vi	Rs 18,799 Cr	6228.4 MHz	3.01
Adani Data Networks	Rs 212 Cr	400 MHz	0.53

Adani did spent minimal money for 5G spectrum - all for spectrum on 26GHz band. They have cleared the fact the company will invest for rolling out private 5G networks. They will not compete with Jio, Airtel or Vi. 

Spectrum Band	Who Acquired What?	Remarks
600MHz Block size 5MHz	No taker 10MHz x 22 circles reserved for BSNL 5G
700MHz Block size 5MHz (n-28)	Jio 10MHz in 22 circles
800MHz Block size 1.25MHz	Jio topped up 5MHz in 4 circles - Assam, J&K, NE, UPW	Only Jio uses 800MHz for 4G
900 MHz Block size 0.2MHz	Airtel topped up 3.8MHz in Assam, 5MHz in J&K, 4 MHz in NE
1800 MHz Block size 0.2MHz	All Jio, Airtel, Vi topped up in certain circles.
2100 MHz Block size 5MHz	Only Airtel and Vi topped up
2300 MHz Block size 10MHz	No taker	Jio & Airtel 4G
2500 MHz Block size 10MHz	Only Vi topped up 10MHz each in AP and Punjab	Vi 4G
3300 MHz Block size 10MHz   (n-78)	Airtel 100 MHz x 22 circles Jio 130 MHz in 8 circles (HP, JK, Karntaka, Kerala, MP, NE, Rajasthan, UPW), and 100MHz in remaining 16 circles Vi 50MHz in 17 circles except Assam, HP, JK, NE, Orissa
26GHz Block size 50MHz (n-258)	Airtel 800 MHz x 22 circles Jio 1000 MHz x 22 circles Vi grabbed total 5350 MHz in 16 circles in different values.

From the above chart it's clear that Jio will have 5G on 700MHz (n28), 3300MHz (n78) and 26GHz (n258), while Airtel will have 5G on 3300MHz and 26GHz (n78 and n258). 

The initial rumor is Jio will go for 5G-SA (standalone) where 5G will have separate core and radio networks and Airtel & Vi will opt for 5G-NSA where deploying 5G RAN will be done on top of existing LTE infra. 

There is also dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS) - another method of deploying 5G with 4G technology - but that's not NSA-5G. While NSA creates a 5G network with 4G infrastructure using dual connectivity, DSS permits 4G LTE and 5G NR to coexist in the same frequency band. 5G networks have a variety of spectrum bands available for use, and DSS distributes spectrum between bands based on user demands.

There are certain advantages of 5G-SA like low latency of 5G can be experienced only on 5G-SA, but not on 5G-NSA. Also NSA needs a higher level of energy to power 5G networks with 4G infrastructure. IEEE reported that 5G-NR is more energy-efficient than LTE but using two different forms of cellular technology massively increases power consumption in a network.

But 5G-NSA has other advantages on the operators' side, like easy deployment, reduced cost, fast roll out, pathway to SA-5G. 

Airtel and Vi, being incumbent have 2G networks and now 4G and 5G networks - so it's obvious that they will keep legacy 2G for another 3-5 years. For them 5G roll out has to be easy, at reduced cost - which can be achieved only by opting 5G-NSA network roll out.