- Cellular Operators Association of India has said that private network needs must be exclusively met through operators
- Jio has already recently tried to address enterprise needs with a nationwide 5G network slice
- The Indian private network market is awaiting a decision on spectrum from the national telecoms department
Will we see massive private network adoption across India, as we have seen in China, Europe and North America, possibly not, if the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has its way.
The COAI, which represents Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea among its members, has said that enterprise 5G requirements should be met exclusively through telecom operators, either via spectrum leasing or through network slicing.
“The recent COAI statement echoes similar remarks made in February this year, when the association categorically stated that private networks – or CNPNs (Captive Non-Public Networks) as they are called in India – ‘do not really apply in the Indian ecosystem’, which is somewhat contradictory as COAI members Vi (Vodafone Idea) and Bharti Airtel have both been actively involved in multiple private network projects,” SNS Telecom & IT 5G research director Asad Khan tells Fierce in an email.
Private network projects already happening in India include LTE and 5G-based deployments at Bosch's Bengaluru manufacturing facility, Mahindra & Mahindra's Chakan factory, Nokia's Chennai site, Kirloskar Group's Pune manufacturing plant, Sundaram Clayton Limited premises and A. M. Naik heavy engineering complex, SNS noted.
The 5G slicing dilemma
Jio, which offers a standalone (SA) 5G network nationwide in India, appears to favor the network slicing route, recently launching 10 5G network slices across the country. These include an enterprise slice, an IoT slice and a fixed wireless access (FWA) slice, among others.
“With COAI's third member Jio, there seems to be more of a pivot towards network slicing with the recent launch of 10 network slices over its standalone public 5G networks. However, no publicly disclosed enterprise customers have been announced so far,” Khan noted.
Jio is the only Indian carrier today, however, that operates a nationwide 5G SA network in the country. Airtel is planning to move to standalone in the next three or four years. So, if the COAI gets its way, many operators will have to lease spectrum to enterprises that want to create their own 4G or 5G private network with a small, separate standalone core.
Awaiting a DoT decision
“It remains to be seen how the Department of Telecommunications decides to proceed with its reassessment of locally licensed spectrum demand for CNPNs,” Khan said.
Earlier this year, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India recommended direct private network spectrum authorizations under Section 3 of the Telecommunications Act 2023.
Frequency bands under consideration include Band n79 - 4.8-49 GHz, Band n78 - 3.7-3.8 GHz, and Band n257, which covers 28.5-29.5 GHz.
“For wide area private networks, the railway sector already has access to 2 x 10 MHz of 700 MHz spectrum, and an additional paired 10 MHz band of sub-1 GHz spectrum is being made available for the implementation of a Broadband Public Protection & Disaster Relief network for the country's first responders,” Khan concluded.