5G acceleration is one of the main themes at MWC 2023. It’s no longer a concept, the technology is transforming connectivity and communication.

Telecommunication or telecom companies are looking to embrace and deploy 5G solutions to provide differentiated services to their customers.

To meet this ambition, telcos must overcome significant commercial and technical challenges, according to Ravishankar Sethuraman, Senior Vice President – Head – 5G Engineering at HCLTech.

“The cost of 5G deployment is a big challenge,” says Sethuraman, speaking at the HCLTech booth at MWC in Barcelona, Spain.

“Service providers are striving to recuperate their investment from 4G and 5G requires an even greater financial commitment,” he adds.

In terms of technical challenges, 5G uses shorter wavelengths due to higher frequencies. “Higher frequencies lessen the reach, which means that [telcos] must implement better radio and antenna planning [in terms of location and positioning],” explains Sethuraman.

In terms of technical challenges, 5G uses shorter wavelengths due to higher frequencies. “Higher frequencies lessen the reach, which means that [telcos] must implement better radio and antenna planning [in terms of location and positioning],” explains Sethuraman.

Radio planning is an essential part of optimizing and deploying a 5G network.

Overcoming the 5G hurdles

Traditionally, telcos have prioritized and focused on retail customers, the average person who pays a fixed amount on their mobile contracts each month. This incoming revenue is not enough to support network growth and 5G ambitions.

To overcome this, telcos are increasingly using their networks to solve problems for other industries, such as supporting automation initiatives in the manufacturing sector.

By expanding services beyond retail customers to the enterprise, telcos can expand revenue streams, and can monetize the network better, which provides them with the investment needed to adopt and deploy 5G solutions.

Regarding the technical challenges, 5G brings a lot of innovation into the network and enables radio engineering to support better radio planning.

HCLTech’s 5G System Integrated Framework

Looking at minimizing the challenges of 5G deployment, HCLTech has launched its 5G System Integrated Framework, which is a collection of solution accelerators for network function onboarding, testing and validation, network abstraction, network slicing and network service assurance and analytics.

Explaining the framework, Sethuraman says: “5G has an open and disaggregated architecture. Service providers may buy components from different vendors and put them all together and expect them to work. They're not going to work, as there could be variations in implementation standards.

“This framework automates the whole process of deployment, providing the end customer with better costs and efficiency.”

HCLTech is showcasing these cutting-edge solutions designed to accelerate 5G enterprise adoption and build foundations for emerging standards at MWC.

Deployed 5G in action

The tenets of 5G are high speed, low latency, location accuracy, the ability to connect a large number of devices and edge computing.

Looking at one of these tenets, 5G technology can provide very accurate location services.

Implementing this in a real-world scenario, HCLTech partnered with a mining company to deploy 5G cameras.

“Every time a miner moves from one place to another, they are monitored using wearable 5G devices and cameras, which can tell which miner is where and when. Various sensors could gather details on the air quality, composition and other parameters. If there is a gas leak, for example, the mine is now able to alert their miners in real-time and trigger the necessary actions to protect people,” says Sethuraman.

The evolution of 5G

Looking forward, Sethuraman predicts that there will be many more 5G standalone networks deployed from service providers.

In addition, he believes “more 5G industrial use cases will help the service providers to monetize the network better, which will increase Enterprise 5G Network Deployments.”

He adds: “6G is around the corner, but we must make 5G profitable first.”

Check out all the latest content from the HCLTech booth at MWC in Barcelona, Spain.