The GSMA has waded into the debate about whether India should allocate mid-band spectrum for private 5G, urging the government that a carrier-led model is best. Meanwhile, word on the street is that India’s ‘demand survey’ last month to assess enterprise interest in private 5G spectrum was a dud.
Policy debate – the Indian government faces pressure from GSMA and COAI to maintain a carrier-led model for private 5G.
Survey questions – a survey of enterprise demand for private spectrum saw few responses, allegedly due to its complexity.
Global evidence – the GSMA argues set-asides in other markets have shown no measurable benefit and may harm public networks.
Some intrigue and confusion in India, where the government continues to debate whether to carve-up a tranche of mid-band spectrum for enterprises to deploy their own private 5G networks. The GSMA, representing the global operator community, has written to the country’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to resist the urge, and not to follow the regulatory example in certain other markets – which have been wrongfully credited with opening up the private 5G market. India should stick to its guns, the message goes, and reinforce a carrier-led model for private 5G.
At the same time, anecdotal reports suggest the DoT’s ‘demand survey’ last month to assess enterprise interest in private 5G spectrum was set to fail from the start, effectively, on the grounds it was simply too demanding for enterprises to complete – hence the no-show result, claimed sources, as only a few enterprises responded to the survey. “It was deliberately complicated, or else completely over-thought,” said one commentator, suggesting the survey required enterprises to provide details about site ownership, network coordinates, and deployment models.
“It was made to be so difficult; it was not just a simple survey about potential demand. It required them to log-in, show legal documents, define their rollout plans. Imagine asking all that of an enterprise that doesn’t care about telecoms as its core business? The burden to provide so much information was too cumbersome”. The claims are unverified; RCR Wireless has not seen a copy of the demand survey. But the source is credible, and a proper explanation of the almost-total lack of a response to the original survey is strange. Certainly, it seems like the big guns have aligned.
There was some cynicism about the likely result of the consultation ahead of its result, as laid out in a recent RCR Wireless report.
New reports in local business newspapers in India quoted a letter to the DoT, dated August 29, from Jeanette Whyte, its head of public policy for the APAC region. Whyte wrote: “India’s state-of-the-art public mobile networks are fully capable of meeting enterprise connectivity needs in a competitive, secure, and cost-effective manner… Global evidence clearly shows that spectrum set-asides in prime IMT bands offer no measurable benefit to enterprises, while significantly undermining public mobile network performance, affordability and consumer outcomes.”
The Economic Times, which appears to have broken the original story, maintains it has seen a copy of the GSMA letter. Certainly, it chimes with the stated GSMA position on private enterprise-owned 5G spectrum. The alliance published papers on ‘spectrum set-asides’ in 2024 and 2023; the latter states: “The analysis finds no indication that spectrum set-asides can accelerate the digitalisation of enterprises. This is consistent whether we examine the impact of set-asides on either the adoption of private networks or IoT connectivity by enterprises.”
The GSMA argues that the adoption of private 4G/5G networks can be explained by “time trends and other factors”, rather than by non-carrier spectrum policy. Even the impacts of the most seminal shared/private spectrum policies – notably, the mid-band allocations in Germany (3.7-3.8 GHz), the US (3.55-3.7 GHz), and the UK (3.8-4.2 GHz), plus others – are just mirages, it argues. “Any initial correlations are spurious and not indicative of a policy effect,” it writes – going so far as to suggest that any momentum is really just down to carrier coordination in the background.
It says: “The lack of association between set-asides and the adoption of private networks can be explained by the availability of alternative options… Enterprises can access complete private network solutions from public mobile operators. A further option for enterprises is to power their private networks using spectrum available through sharing frameworks or spectrum leasing. Similarly, the lack of association with IoT adoption indicates that set-asides do not enhance the ability of enterprises to access these services beyond what alternative spectrum access modes offer.”
It also chimes with the line from the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), which issued a strongly-worded response last month to the DoT’s demand survey to say India is a special case and should not copy the licensing regimes in other countries – even where they have worked, arguably, to make private 4G and 5G easily available for enterprises. “Direct spectrum allocation to enterprises is not tenable in India because of various reasons pertaining to India’s telecom ecosystem, the national revenue as well as security architecture,” it wrote.
“While some industry bodies have, in their own interests, drawn parallels with countries such as the US, Finland, Germany, UK, etc. where private networks have been deployed, this comparison ignores a crucial contextual difference of such industries being located in remote or geographically secluded areas with limited public network coverage. In India, however, most industrial corridors and enterprise zones are already well-served by telecom operators, thereby leaving no coverage deficit.
“It is further misleading to state that setting up private networks independently would be cheaper for enterprises as in reality, deploying a private 5G network entails significant capital expenditure on equipment, spectrum management, security, network maintenance and skilled personnel. Unlike TSPs (Telecom Service Providers), most enterprises do not have the expertise or scale to manage telecom infrastructure efficiently. What appears cheaper on paper could turn out to be more expensive and operationally burdensome in practice.”
