Our policies need to change by permitting cost-less changes that build network systems and service delivery.
Shyam Ponappa | June 3, 2021
The anticipation and excitement about 5G or full-fledged 4G is all about apps and user experience. People focus on user devices such as smartphones and computers, whereas delivery requires end-to-end network systems — for education, skill development, training, software as a service, healthcare, transportation, retail, travel, or entertainment. For these, our foundations are sorely lacking. The most deficient are the long lead-time, slow payback, difficult aspects of “plumbing”, akin to completing the user-side networks of water pipes and sewerage for water supply, or networks for electricity. As with the plumbing, we need the network development of all the links to experience end-to-end, high-speed communications, as explained below.
Indian “unicorns”, tech startups valued at over a billion dollars, have been growing latterly at a dizzying pace (1). Optimists see them as a way out of our primordial mess. For pragmatists, profitability and staying power will prove they are not just examples of irrational exuberance, although there is no doubt many provide value through aggregation and convenience. The caveats are that they disrupt markets, and their spread is largely in services, except for very few in pharmaceuticals/biotechnology and renewable energy.
These services depend on the structured, hierarchical organisation of equipment and systems, what the tech marketplace calls the technology stack. “Tech-stacks” are systems made up of layers that fit in a logical sequence at each functional level of a process to deliver their “products” to users at successive levels, whether the deliveries are considered goods or services.
Now, users engage with apps as front-end interfaces. Some people are aware of the levels beyond, i.e., the operating systems, the technical features of the devices, and the communications service providers/telcos (Chart 1).
Chart 1
Adapted from: https://the-ken.com/the-nutgraf/jio-is-in-the-endgame-now/
Very few look beyond that, to the levels of the telcos’ technology stack or back-end. Yet, this is where our problems begin: In dense commercial or residential areas, for instance, laying new cables is very difficult and expensive, whereas wireless links can be easier and cheaper. This is also true for rural/semi-urban areas, where the profit potential may be more limited. The network stack or system comprises user devices connecting to towers or access points, which can be cellular or Wi-Fi devices, which connect to aggregation points through backhaul across the “middle-mile”, and from there to the core network (Chart 2).
Many in urban India have fibre connections up to their access points, whether those devices are Wi-Fi or cellular base stations. Others may have a coaxial or ethernet cable up to their access points, and a wireless connection to aggregation points, which connect with the fibre core. These links in our networks is where we are deficient.
Early on, India’s policy-makers expected market mechanisms to provide these lower-order layers of the stack. Despite evidence to the contrary, our policy-makers and regulators apparently still continue to expect this, although laying cables to every household is simply not feasible in India.
Self-Constraining Mindsets
It took nine years to enable full use of the 5 GHz Wi-Fi bands in India (in 2018, instead of in 2009/10). Until then, 5 GHz Wi-Fi devices could not be used to their full potential in India because of our self-imposed restrictions. So, they were unusable for Wi-Fi hotspots or for backhaul, one reason there are so few hotspots.
It would have cost nothing apart from the effort for the authorities to develop enabling policies and make them work. There would have been some operating and administrative costs, but no capital investment. It was not the lack of technology, nor the lack of capital, nor material resources, nor of organisation. It was a mental block, a constraining mindset, that prevented successive governments from removing these shackles. It was a wilful restriction of available technology and productivity tools.
Could these policy constraints have been aggravated by the turbulence created by the CAG Report in 2010? Possibly, and the chilling effect on constructive spectrum policies has endured. Think of what it means to constrain ourselves in this way, because more changes are needed to complete and enhance the links in our networks.
So What Do We Need?
We have the right policies for 5 GHz Wi-Fi. We also need user access to high-speed wireless (6 and 60 GHz), and for telcos to have short-distance and intermediate-distance backhaul (60 GHz up to 1.5 km; 70-80 GHz up to 4-5 km), in addition to the 5G bands being considered. Without these, the linkages are incomplete or of insufficient capacity.
The changes required are, to permit licensed operators to use 60 GHz and 70-80 GHz for backhaul/middle-mile for network capacity quickly and at least cost, and 6 GHz and 60 GHz for Wi-Fi user access. A realistic way for a developing country to do this is through shared infrastructure, including spectrum and Radio Access Networks, with consortium ownership and government participation. Until this happens, we are likely to be restricted in our ability to deal with our needs for livelihood and well-being, with the impossibility of enormous expense of multiple networks, the impracticality of laying cables everywhere, and without the financial justification or capacity to do it.
It is like trying to create cities or become a manufacturing or agricultural powerhouse without the infrastructure of water-sewerage-electricity-logistics-communications as the basis not only for all the hardware, but also for the skilled human resources and “wetware” trained and accultured to make the most of all of this.
Enabling rules and executive decisions are the first steps. Organising appropriately to capitalise on and implement the possibilities in the public interest is the next. This will need organising consortiums for sharing infrastructure, spectrum payment based on usage, and so on. Until our policy-makers understand and engage with these self-imposed obstacles, remove them, and force the issue of organised high-speed wireless in a practical, sustainable way, most of our people cannot have the basic appurtenances required to equip themselves to live and work well today.
Shyam (no space) Ponappa at gmail dot com
1: Indian Unicorns - https://plus.credit-suisse.com/rpc4/ravDocView?docid=V7qfQq2AN-Wd1W
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