Nokia is already manufacturing 5G radios in its factory in Chennai. 5G radios are run on the Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) — the next generation network technology. Nokia does not find it necessary to test its 5G technology in India as it is already in use in several parts of the world. Over 96 operators have launched commercial retail 5G services and 397 operators are investing in 5G networks.

India is fortunately using the same spectrum band of 3.5 GHz as are countries like the US, those in Europe and others. India specific studies could be done, say in agriculture and healthcare. These would be the new areas of revenue for the operators.

Nokia is open to support system integrators such as Tech Mahindra, Sterlite and HFCL for ORAN network deployment. It has achieved substantial levels of localisation in manufacturing telecom gear.

5G networks use shorter frequencies — millimeter waves of 30 GHz to 300 GHz. Hence, 5G is faster. High band 5G spectrum boosts speed, capacity, low latency and quality. 5G speeds tops out at 10 gigabits per second (Gbps). It is 10 to 100 times faster than 4G.

Previous generations of Internet have shown lesser speeds — 3.5G has 42.2 Mbps speed, 4G/LTE has 100 Mbps speed, 4G/LTE Category 4 has 150 Mbps speed, 4G LTE Advanced has 1000 Mbps speed. In comparison, 5G has 10,000 Mbps speed.

Latency is the delay between sending and receiving information. 5G’s latency is 1 millisecond (1 ms). 4G’s latency is 200 ms. Average human reaction time to a visual stimulus is 250 ms or 0.25 seconds. 5G can respond to large amounts of incoming information within milliseconds.

Beyond improving speed 5G is expected to unleash an IoT ecosystem where network can serve communication needs for billions of connected devices, with the right trade-offs between speed, latency and cost. 5G can have up to 100x number of connected devices per unit area, as compared with 4G LTE.