System integrators will have important role in 5G-era: Jio’s Kapil Ahuja

System integrators (SIs) will play an important role in the fifth-generation or 5G space by serving the specific needs of organisations and enterprises, said a senior executive of Reliance Jio.

“When we look at very industry-specific segments, the applications are going to vary. Right from conceptualisation, strategising for the organisation to the planning stage, implementation of services, and subsequently, customisation for that particular industry or for that individual organisation, then to sustaining the microservices, this is the role that will continue to be played by system integrators when we look at 5G,” said Kapil Ahuja, CEO (North), Jio.

He was speaking in a panel discussion at the fourth edition of ETTelecom’s Digital Telco Summit – 2023, organised with the TRAI Centre of Studies and Research.

Ahuja said Jio’s objective is to provide 5G everywhere, and to everyone which includes all stakeholders. “So this coming together of the industry, a very vital role is underway by these system integrators,” the executive noted.

Gulshan Khurana, EVP, Vodafone Idea, on the theme of telcos’ collaboration with hyperscaler companies said that this model has not been a successful one, as far as core telecom applications are concerned.

“I don’t see the jump will happen to hyperscalers quickly to put my voice core, IMS, or my policy applications on hyperscale. But for industry applications or for B2B, I would rather have a hybrid model with core telco applications on my own private cloud. But how do we manage those two together? For a consumer, it should not be visible whether the services are derived from hyperscalers or telco cloud,” Khurana said.

V Raghunandan, Secretary, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) while noting the absence of any significant 5G use cases, said, “Collaboration is the way forwards. Collaboration is the new mantra.”

“Convergence is definitely inevitable. You cannot stop the technology or the convergence. But at least collaboration is in your hands. The operators, the small players, and the bigger players, have to come together and work with them,” said Raghunandan.

R Shakya, DDG (PM), Department of Telecommunications, citing the Bharat 6G Alliance said that the industry stakeholders are bringing together academia, research institutes, telcos, manufacturers, testing and certifying agencies under one roof to develop ‘exportable’ products for the next-generation network technology.

“An entire ecosystem is being worked out in such a way that the tomorrow of the telecom belongs to this country. We will not be mere consumers of products from the rest of the world, import, use and provide the services but we want to be the exporter of the technology. We want to be the innovator of the technology, and we want to be the hub of telecom manufacturing,” Shakya said.

The telecom department official also shone a light on the fact that 65 innovators under the Digital Communication Innovation Square Scheme (DCIS) were recently felicitated with Rs 105 crore of funds to support them in converting their products into commercially sellable products.

“We have seen the urgency with which the government is progressing in terms of both progressive policy and ultimately linking it with exports, because that’s the biggest validation of whether the innovation is really sustainable in the global environment,” said Rahul Hakeem, Partner, KPMG in India.

Hakeem moderated the panel discussion.