Wipro Partners With Telecom Infra Project To Drive 5G Adoption Through Software

Ahead of India’s much-awaited 5G transformation, global information technology company Wipro announced on Wednesday that it will work within the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) to drive 5G adoption in the global communications service provider and enterprise markets.

The company said that they will promote collaboration between Wipro’s 5G strategic initiative, academia and industry thought leaders across communications and network equipment providers (NEP) industries worldwide. Wipro’s role will be to provide interoperability lab services and the end-to-end rollout support for advancing 5G wireless networks with software-based solutions.

Launched in February 2016, TIP was started with the goal to accelerate the pace of innovation in the telecom industry. In addition, Wipro’s 5G TIP collaboration leverages its Engineering NXT offerings, enabling innovation at scale to support product and platform development, as well as wireless solutions for more than 500 clients across multiple industries.

The Indian tech giant is investing significantly in the creation of a TIP-based blueprint for a 5G MNO reference architecture and a next-generation 5G operational model. The company said that its engineering competencies cover the entire 5G value chain, from the creation of new 5G chips, software engineering for network function virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networks (SDN), operation support system (OSS) and business support system (BSS) automation and comprehensive testing and validation services.

Sanjay Bhartiya, vice president, industrial and engineering services, Wipro Limited, said, “Our Engineering NXT approach is the synthesis of our broad industry design experience for creating connected devices, software and data platforms to drive customer innovation at scale.”

The companies said that Wipro’s 5G TIP investment addresses four key distinct areas:

• Continuous physical end-to-end integration and validation of OpenRAN technologies developed within the TIP community
• Creation of a cost-effective, autonomous 5G-ready next generation, widely open source OSS, BSS platform that harnesses the power of machine learning and advanced analytics to create new business models and revenue streams.
• Modular end-to-end cybersecurity models
• Optimised operations model, leveraging hyper-automation through the company’s HOLMES AI and automation platform

5G networks are expected to be launched in India by 2020, however, there’s still no confirmation from any of the operators and neither has the government set a date for the spectrum auction. Telecom players are also shy about investing heavily towards 5G infrastructure at this time due to various regulatory and policy-related issues.

It is predicted that the 5G technology will create a cumulative economic impact of $1 Tn in India by 2035. Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company Ericsson had estimated that 5G enabled digitalisation revenue potential in India will be above $27 Bn by 2026. GSMA Intelligence had projected that 5G will be adopted by about 70 Mn users in India by 2025.