India Ka DNA 2019 Conclave: BSNL to launch 5G services in India by 2020, says CMD Anupam Shrivastava

BSNL CMD talked about changes that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Digital India drive brought in the country

BSNL's launch of ultra-high-speed 5G services is expected to take place in tandem with the global launch.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) looks set launch 5G services in India by 2020, said Anupam Shrivastava, Chairman & Managing Director, BSNL at Zee Media Group's India ka DNA Conclave that kicked off this morning.

"BSNL was the first to begin 3G in the country. As the world is gearing up for 5G, we are trying to begin 5G services in India also by 2020," Shrivastava said in a discussion on how to reap digital dividend.

Shrivastava also talked about changes that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Digital India drive brought in the country. We need to focus on 'broadband for all' in the country as we move forward on digitisation path.

The telecom company's launch of ultra-high-speed fifth-generation or 5G services is expected to take place in tandem with the global launch.

The state-owned telco is entering into partnership with companies like Nokia, ZTE and Coriant to launch these services.

Nokia has completed a live network trial to validate the benefits of cloud-optimised radio access networks in Poland in collaboration with Orange for the smooth evolution to next-generation 5G technologies.

The two companies trialled Cloud RAN technology to prepare for the eventual introduction of a distributed cloud architecture for 5G by Orange. A distributed, cloud-based radio access network architecture like Nokia's AirScale Cloud RAN provides capacity where it prepares the network for the deployment of new 5G access technology as part of a multi-layered architecture.

The trial took place from March to the beginning of May in Poland, with radio sites in the city of Chelm and the virtualised part of the baseband running in a data center in Lublin, around 70 km away. As a result, Nokia's AirScale Cloud Base Station provided equally strong network performance on both Nokia's reference cloud infrastructure and on Orange's own cloud environment, a Nokia statement said.

Meanwhile, Nokia has completed a live network trial to validate the benefits of cloud-optimised radio access networks in Poland in collaboration with Orange for the smooth evolution to next-generation 5G technologies.