Amantya Podcast Series Episode 3 | Role of 5G labs in the Future of Connectivity with Gaurav Sharma
[Music] series the topic of today's conversation is 5G lab and its role in the future of connectivity interestingly today 11th May is also the national technology day a day dedicated to recognizing scientific and technological developments making today's discussion around one of the most prominent and transformative Technologies of current times even more meaningful we already spoke extensively about 5G and its potential in our earlier uh podcast where we discussed how the you know 5G has taken connectivity to an altogether different level helping unlock new use cases and helping us realize the full potential of you know next-gen Technologies like AR VR AI artificial intelligence machine learning v2x robotics Mech Etc in case you missed the podcast or want to visit it again it's available on our website and social media pages today we and focus on an important enabler of 5G and its related Technologies the 5G lab and the vital role it plays in enabling and accelerating the development of the 5G ecosystem and here with us to share his expert views and Industry outlook on the topic Amantya's 5G specialist and the force behind our comprehensive 5G Solutions and services portfolio our AVP engineering gaurav Sharma welcome gaurav wonderful to have you here with us today look forward to our interesting and informative session with you sure so let's just start and we'll start with the uh getting the basics of 5G labs so my first question to you is what are 5G labs and how do they add value to the fast evolving fighter ecosystem okay so uh before I start talking about 5G Labs as such let's let's take a step back let's talk a little bit about five years what's the whole Buzz around 5G right because once you understand what is 5G why is it critical obviously you'll be in a position to better appreciate why do we need five chill apps all right now if you look at the way the communication industry has evolved especially in the last few years right uh the world has become a much much much more connected place right not only in the terms of devices that actually talk to each other but also in the in in terms of the speed with which they talk to each other right now if you recall 20 30 years back phone was nothing more than just something that you picked up called your family or your friends and passed on the message three minutes right and then the critical thing about that was that you were actually not calling people your calling locations so you had a fixed phone right so you were not calling a person you were calling a location now with the Advent of uh mobile 2G Wireless you started calling people right people were moving right so locations were changing now what happened with that was that okay so you took this step now you started calling people The Next Step obviously was let's move away from voice let's start talking about data with 2G of course you had a very very poor speeds right uh 3G came in splits were bummed up and it is at that point of time people started realizing this thing that probably communication is moving forward or moving in a different uh space now it's it's not voice Centric it is Data Centric then 4G happened and then people actually took this notice that okay now we have probably had this cusp of uh things where you would want the whole world to be connected devices to be talking to each other so you had all these crazy Technologies right now if you look at uh now where we are today and if we look forward right there would be billions and billions of devices talking to each other in the time to come and we are talking here about speeds reaching up to gbps right now Legacy Technologies like 4G for example that came the first 4G setups that were ruled that were somewhere uh in the year 2011 or 2012 I remember we had these London uh Olympics 2012 right and at that point of time there was this great Buzz that 4G network would change the way Olympics are conducted right and a lot of people started uh experiencing now where we are today uh we are 10 years after that so the requirements of these devices in in terms of connectivity in terms of speed in terms of reliability quality of service Etc that has changed tremendously now to address all those things uh obviously you had to come up with a newer architecture and that is where 5G comes into picture right so it promises I think speeds connectivity for billions and trillions of devices right and and so on and of course future is going to be more connected right so today if you look at the way you conduct your life or just just have a look around yourself right you see this communication technology at your house and most of the devices that you use automobiles hospitals Industries machines everywhere right now what has made this thing possible right it is just the ability of devices to communicate with each other right and as I said moving forward this communication will become all the more complex right so 5G gave us that uh those features or that capability wherein you could uh develop all these things right so once we understand that yes future is going to be 5G right and of course we are talking about 6G as well right so so once we understand this thing the case 5G is critical it is going to be the next wave for us then you start appreciating that Rome wasn't built in a day right you can't have a big bank to wherein say on a Monday morning everything is 5G enabled and everything is working like a chart okay now whenever new technology comes in obviously there is this slow ramp up curve this painful ramp up curve where people need to adapt to this technology when I see people I'm also counting in devices machines the way we conduct business the way um machines talk to each other automobiles etc etc right but then this presents a challenge say today if I have a 4G device right that has been uh in the market for last see eight years working fine now suddenly I find myself that uh now the network has changed it is no longer 4G because no 5G now how do I know where's my device work or not in a 5G Network do I need to modify something right or do I need to update certain things and apart from that one is of course the compatibility with Legacy devices the other is how do I actually get the benefit of 5G right so if 5G promises Me Greater speeds then can I write a application or can I come up with the iot sensor or can I come up with the device that actually utilizes this higher bandwidth and gives better services to its consumers right so that is where these Labs or these prototype shankers we play a very very essential role right and so so that's one part of it so if you look at the consumers of this 5G Maps as I said device manufacturers communication providers [Music] um operators cellular operators that's that's a big check of things the other is it the other thing is more of a cultural and social change right now if you look at the Indian deck space right now India is a leader in it right or for that matter any country if it's a leader in some sort of space uh what does it mean or how does it become a leader right it becomes a leader because those particular capabilities they become kind of ingrained within the society so let's take an example of sports why do you think India is a bar house in cricket one of the primary reasons is you see small kids playing cricket right a lot of small kids play cricket it's a not plug right and then some of these obviously because of training because of their natural inclination and talent obviously they will do good similarly with it what has happened in India is that it has seeped into our society right today you find children in in C Class 6 class 8th Class 10th people are good or kids are coding people they are building Android apps or building something here and there right so it has seeped it to this now what these labs actually what potential would do is that encourage a lot of students or professionals who want to explore this or who are interested into experiencing 5G so these slabs would actually give them this very important platform is that okay if I want to learning and and say tomorrow bonus I might want to open a 5G company right building some sensors or something of that type so early starters or kids at a very young age or in college these slabs would actually provide them the ability to actually experience and then kind of learn these things so by the kind you're out of the college they already have their B6 sorted so that's that's a very uh impactful thing and then that is swear I guess uh these these sort of labs they are very very important and the government is also kind of encouraging uh the signal lock right that's right that's right yeah in that we have the uh the government's decent initiative of hundred fight relapse like since we are on the topic I was going to ask you later why don't you ask avoidance you know I ask you this question now what can you tell us a little bit about that initiative sure sure now if you again look at the last few years and I'm getting the politics of this uh right uh one of the key areas where the governments of the day especially in the last few decades uh they've started to focus on is to market India as a technology up right now traditionally if you look at India uh the world who did not see India as a technology Powerhouse right it's in the last few decades probably 90s onwards started uh and then the governments started focusing on this thing the world took a notice that okay yeah but there's something good that these guys are doing and each successive government has played a role in it right uh now in the recent years and especially if you look at the whole geographical scenario today right so you have a lot of countries collaborate with each other but then there is also this tension or this thing happening that at the end of the day uh you need to live or you need to stand on your feet as well right now how do you make that possible to make those things possible uh the garments of of each important critical countries they are encouraging they are investing a lot into this thing and they are providing these Avenues and platforms where the government is funding they want people to experience this they want people to innovate they want people to come up with patents crazy ideas just try to implement things and then especially in the last few years you might have seen even in the budget that we have there's a lot of focus on technology right and and in the recent budget as well there was a good amount of uh money that was kind of kept asideful this this one absolutely absolutely and can you just just look at the things that have happened in the last uh few years right the whole digitization of the country right people used to look at the way people are um using UPA today right who would have thought a small window sitting somewhere he would be doing these transactions on UPA right it's a tremendous tremendous thing especially for a country of our size right and that has been only made possible because government has started focusing on these things and then coming back to this uh 5G labs Android 5G labs and what else do you expect the government to do right they have given you or they have given this special budget set up 100 laps and I'm sure this is not being this is just the start so they are funding these labs and then there are so many other things as well that are happening in and around this so if colleges and and institutions they want to do this there are grants available there are subsidies available right so the government has actually gone out of their way encourage this right and again it's a it's a cultural shift that they are trying to do right so a bathroom like it will of course boost the 5G ecosystem but periphery you also see a whole lot of other things that will happen with these kind absolutely right again I'm coming back to that think technology like so many other things things it's a it's a cultural thing all right why do you think uh West and when I say best I'm referring to us at this point of time every time it is at the Forefront of Technology right because the way their society has developed technology has always been encouraged right and that is this way they have been able to innovate so much that is the reason why they are so ahead of all these things you look at their college system you look at the Way Grants are given you look at the number of patents that these guys are really right that's that's kind of amazing and and these guys have been doing it for the last 200 years to 300 years right and that is the primary reason we have uh USS where it is similarly uh look at your Eastern neighbor China in the last 30 odd years or so they have actually put in so much of amount of effort into again this whole shift China wasn't a technology Powerhouse look we are at history in the last 30 years each and every action that these guys have taken be it creating companies be it providing an environment be it building factories be it uh creating those conditions it has been to actually make China a technology bar house now our government is also replicating the same thing man so it's it's just a cultural thing that they want uh to happen look at just the effects it has of course you will have this very vibrant ecosystem of startups where anybody who wants to build something on this technology he has an easy access on the infrastructure he can visit this lab come up with see a sensor a device or anything that he wants to do District of this lab file a patent maybe launch a company right and again it is one of those things when it starts picking up pace right you kind of open the floodgates right if one person can do it why not the other right so it's it's kind of democratizing the whole system so that is why I think personally speaking people are underestimating the impact of this thing in the years to come they'll probably realize at that point of time that what a fundamental shift this has brought to this thing so yeah we've spoken about finding Labs we've spoken vacuum spoken about research and students what other use cases and you see okay so talking about the other avenues or or places where uh this is going to make an impact right now say uh today a lot of industries that are already your factories that are already uh manufacturing producing a lot of say 4G or Wi-Fi equipment right and uh they want to move to fatigue right now investing in an infrastructure for them isn't an easy thing right now what these Labs actually will do is provide them a place say today they are manufacturing a 4G sensor right now tomorrow if the plan to make a 5G sensor how do they test it and this is the please the lab where they can come bring in their equipment right and they can test it I'll give you another example right now a lot of companies uh I mean their business model is that uh a lot of equipment before it actually gets rolled out there are a lot of test cases or standard testing that needs to be done now where do they do that testing right again these Labs provide the answer right I'll give you a very practical example right we have seen a lot of automobiles or car manufacturers uh rolling out connectivity Solutions right so they have this PCU within their car and what this PCU does is that it keeps on significant data to the cloud platform right and this data is basically health of your car speed Etc now tomorrow because the rule out of 5G how does the car manufacturer know that is TCU will actually work right he can bring this TC to this particular lock he should be able to test it plus at the same point of time say if I need to uh So 4G has its own set of speeds that are on the lower side when I say Lower Side yeah we are still talking in terms of hundreds of Mbps but with uh a fighty we are talking of gbps right so say tomorrow if I need to rule out a technology similar to e2x which is equal to everything right now that and then some of these security features on the car collision avoidance detection Etc right now how do I test those and because that is much much much more real time so we are talking here about uh the time it takes from the car for a message to leave TCO to reach to your server within say five milliseconds or some millisecond even depending upon a what the use case is now to pick advantage of this particular feature of 5G the manufacturer because this is a feature that isn't available in 4G so the manufacturer cannot innovate or cannot come up with a solution for this weird Z test it now he can bring that thing to the lab and since the lab will support features of low latency High reliability you can have a v2x server running the automobile manufacturer can test these things prototype these things within the and that should give him a lot of confidence to actually roll out things so these sort of Industries I believe they'll get tremendous tremendous amount of benefit out of this because you see I mean one of the problems that these industries face is that earlier if they built a sensor or built a device right the only place they could test this thing was talk to a big operator it is or of the world right now for a very small company with say five to ten people it's just an uphill task right it's uphill task it needs a lot of investment as with but with these Labs these are custom for these sort of smaller medium Enterprises so these people they can take tremendous benefit from these Labs so basically when we say this the use the benefits will be across Industries meet agriculture mining Health Care Auto are being it's like across Industries absolutely absolutely so if you look at the way and then this is what I was alluding uh to at the beginning just look at the way uh we have so many devices in fact we are surrounded by devices right uh there are more devices than the number of people in this world all right yeah so uh in in terms of Industries I mean across everything right be it uh automobile manufacturing health construction rate every you you find devices everywhere and five shears what will make these things tick in the time to come so kind of like moving away from our use cases which are about uh see testing or validating existing on you you know products or Solutions right distributions that are coming up in what about private 5G uh does 253 Labs also uh they also play a big role in uh you know letting us have the full potential of a uh like a private 5G Network sure definitely and and again if you look at the way this whole 5G technology evolved right uh of course with 4G as well you have private Enterprises or private networks right but with 5G that is actually going to uh have this tremendous or give this tremendous boost to prohibit networks because the way the technology works right so and then one of the primary objectives of uh 5G is to actually replace Wi-Fi right now a lot of Enterprises actually tend to rely on Wi-Fi networks for their day to day application working etc etc now with private 5G coming into picture right and providing all the required connectivity speed features plus so many other things this is definitely going to have a big impact on private Enterprises now again there are certain specific use cases around private Enterprises in terms of interconnectivity and in terms of internet access in in terms of devices uh right that this opens this whole field wherein a lot of newer private Enterprise applications and application developers who haven't actually explored this uh area right now are in a position that they can actually leverage these labs to actually develop paste do prototyping of their applications for private 5G so yes definitely that's going to be game changer for private 5G as web that's great so much of you know potential these things have now coming to amantya speaking about the mantel's type gips could you tell us a little bit about an antipsy HD lab solution and again I mean before I talk about that solution again I would want to take a step back what was the idea behind this right now uh amantya was in the process of developing D5 GSA core now what we realized at that point of time is that okay we have this essay code right but how do we or how do people actually start using it right of course you'll have big operators they'll always use it on big organizations uh they'll actually be using it right but then what about smaller organizations or or see and iot sensor manufacturer or a device manufacturer or an application developer right how do I kind of uh encourage him or provide him that space or provide him that platform wherein he can actually start using this particular technology right because at the end of the day if a technology is not being used or if it is not that pervasive the technology doesn't really uh fly off right so with that intent in mind uh we were very clear that we need to come up with something which is very simple uh cost effective and very very easy to roll out right now if I go to a manufacturer of devices and I start explaining to him 5G technology and I tell him that OB will have to have 20 people to actually rule out this thing and then you'll have to have an operations team and and then all those complexities that these big operators um find themselves in inside he he didn't say my business is to actually make devices I am not an operator right I can't manage these things right so the intent from the very beginning was to keep things simple abstract out all the complexities uh that the 5G network has and provide something which is very simple very easy to digest easy on eyes so and and uh and then something so straightforward that the person who's actually using it doesn't actually see the complexity in it it's it's something just a small device sitting there you just go ahead switch on a button and then wait for the magic to them so that was the intention uh behind this thing right now since that was the intention we started building uh our Network in a Box Lab solution right again the idea here was that we did not want to have a very big very expensive very large uh infrastructure right so it's a small box you have the 5G core running connect you have three 5G ran or the gene would be of the radio part running within that same box right both of them by the way are standard 3gpp compliant products right so you can take each piece out and you can integrate it with any standard uh implementation as well right now with this box running and and again it's it's so simple to operate we provide pre-configured boxes Sims is with so what you have to do or anybody has to do is get this box put it in a slab switch on the box and put one of these Sims inside his 5G device or a mobile and here's 5G Network right so that was the intention the way we built up this whole product it was with this mindset only right and that's one of the reasons a lot of people who actually have seen this particular product or have or are now starting to use it uh they are kind of surprised actually when we give them the demonstrations who have switched on this thing and we have 5G and then they look at their phone yes I can see 5G another kind of confusion what the magic happened right and uh it's coming back to this thing and and in the other Salient features of our product of course you can get a lot of this information from our website as well uh it's it's it's a very flexible thing to have right uh as I mentioned uh so the standard 5G core that we are running within this box you can take that out run it on a separate box that's that's and then you have a number of these uh nav boxes connected together uh the other good thing that you can do is uh it's a so uh so if you look at the 5G frequency spectrum there are these different bands right and the each country uh has started auctioning different bands in India is where we have auctioned a couple of bands now our 5c solution around that actually gives the lab the ability to actually tune uh the bats on which he wants to test right so so for example in India today uh pad number 78 is what it call it popular right so you just go ahead and select band number 78 now say tomorrow if somebody wants to test in band number 41 go ahead choose a simple configuration in the menu and you have band 41 running it now the other things being see if something is wrong somewhere right so the UI is extremely extremely user friendly you can see alarms you can see logs you can see traffic that is passing through right and of course at the end of the day we also provide uh remote support and on-site support is with as in when when it is required right and then and these are the things that actually uh make the solution uh stand out right it's it's something very similar with cars so you'll see a lot of good cars in the market but then they don't become popular right a lot of things in terms of support in terms of how or which features does the user actually user what are they present in that car right so that is sneaky here so what we've tried to do is that we thought like a device manufacturer so if I need to test my device I would want visible features from my box and that is how we kind of developed these things so it's a very powerful solution we have a lot of deployments as well these days now what kind of customers are currently using the solution sure so we have a very wide variety of customers that are actually using this particular solution right so you have Telecom operators we are using pins uh then you have iot device manufacturers they are using this apart from this if second a lot of labs in universities and some of the departments as well we're in people college students or employees they would want to test or experience uh this whole 5G technology right so it's observe across the board right customers backup using this particular solution and uh so what are the future plans for the solution any uh upgrades on the roadmap sure definitely definitely now the Box technique have to be that is uh release 16 compliant and uh these standards they keep on evolving every six months right so we have a very uh rich or good map uh for our Nia we've quite committed uh to a test will right now uh we typically have these half yearly releases in which there are two things at least that we kind of try to look at one is of course bumping up the speed so we have these different skus for our NAB boxes right so somebody may want a cheaper smaller solution we can go for a smaller box somebody may want a more evolved higher throughput solution right so they can go for a bigger box now uh with each release as I said we typically bump up these throughput right when I say throughput so say today we are supporting 400 Mbps right now in the next six months or so you will see this particular speed uh bumping up to 600 Mbps and then of course by the lead draft of the year we plan to take it to close to a gbps I mean and from a feature basis when uh we continue to uh enhance it in terms of adding new functionality right and already the 5G SC code that we have it's just very rich right so a lot of uh the five key features that people want to experience slicing or or qos or things like that boost things are already supported but now what we plan to do is so release 17 pins and a lot of features now there are things happening on the low latency site Ultra reliability so our plans for this year are pretty much booked on this these introducing these features and once upgraded and as you say it's it's a constant evolution of the product as well that's happening how do you think how do you see it adding value and more benefits to the 5G ecosystem be it in India beat in the global markets sure uh look the thing is as people understand this technology wouldn't it be able to digest it more uh people start becoming comfortable with things right so today few hundred nbps may be sufficient for them right tomorrow people will come up with scenarios where they would need even higher speeds where they would come up with even more evolved complicated designs right and as the 3gpp rules out newer features newer specifications since we have a committed roadmap we keep on adding those features into our solution which means that people who are using our henna AV solution right of the lab solution they are able to actually fail these new features now that 3gpp is kind of recommending or rolling up and they can then enhance their design they can then utilize or leverage the new newer things that are happening in this ecosystem right and that's that's the whole benefit of this thing it's such a flexible thing and with amartya so much being committed into this space so it's later we don't see this as a stop Gap thing just a three month thing or a six month thing uh this particular thing is here to stay right so so that's the reason why as standards evolve as new things come uh from either the specifications body or generally yes when we have committed to uh keep on adding those features onto the spectrums well this was like a very very interesting and you know remarkable uh solution that the company has come up with and the way you're telling us it's only going to go it's going to scale up and up and up I hope so it's really good and of course the 5G labs are you know adding their own Dynamics to the 5G ecosystem thank you so much Coral it's been an excellent session I have I am going away little richer in knowledge and excellent takeaways thank you so much thank you so much so with this we come to the end of this episode on 5G labs and their role in the future of connectivity thank you so much for joining us hope you enjoyed listening to God of share his views on the topic we shall be back again with another interesting topic and discussion until then this is rohina signing off bye foreign [Music]
2023-05-18 00:30
