As the telcom companies all over the world look towards upgrading to 5G networks, Rami Rahim, CEO of the $11-billion Juniper Networks, feels 5G networks offers too less for too much.

Talking to BusinessLine during his visit to India, Rahim said, it is still relatively early for 5G deployments given the large capital investments required to move to 5G. Notably, some telcos in India, including Airtel, have already started during 5G trials.

“5G by its nature requires a huge amount of cell densification, meaning you’ll be going from a few macro cells to many more small cells, which means connectivity of those small cells will inherently be more complicated and more expensive. Plus, 5G by virtue of sheer capacity improvement, changes the architecture in the back-end substantially. It essentially pushes out or distributes the core infrastructure that powers 5G and that itself is expensive. The capital outlay for 5G is immense,” Rahim said.

“The business case for 5G is not here yet. Initially, it’ll be mostly about bragging rights — who gets it the fastest and who gets to say they have a 5G network. But I honestly think that 4G is here to stay for a long time and 5G will be limited to smaller islands initially and grow from there over time,” Rahim added.

Investing in new tech

Rahim, however, said that Indian telcos are keen on investing in new technologies and increased competition will lead to more investments despite of revenues rapidly declining. But he pointed out that several 5G deployment announcements globally are misleading and just enhancement to existing 4G networks.

“Initially, many service providers announcing 5G in reality are not offering a complete 5G solution. It will be more of 4.5G or something. It will have 5G radio access network using milimetre wave spectrum, connected or anchored to a 4G core. That doesn’t give you all the benefits that 5G promises,” Rahim pointed out.

Rahim said that unlike 3G and 4G networks, 5G could be introduced as a niche offering to enterprises initially.

“I think 5G could see some new use cases. 3G and 4G when they introduced, they were introduced primarily for the consumer market. 5G because of its superior latency and performance capabilities and its cost, some carriers are thinking of it as a service they’ll deploy only for the enterprises,” Rahim said.

Rahim said enhancements in 4G networks will help keep the technology alive and relevant for the next several years.

“I think 4G will stay for a long time to come and 4G will see its own set of enhancements that will improve capacity. It is more widely deployed (than 5G), so the most cost effective way to enhance the network will be to just enhance the 4G. You can do it in a number of different ways.”

He said even carriers in India are looking for high performance, cost-effective IP transport infrastructure to power 4G networks as a way to improve capacity and quality of service.

“India is just an incredible market opportunity for Juniper. We’ve been in the country for a long time but I think the next couple of years in particular, with the volume of competition that’s now happening among the Indian telcos and with the development of smart cities by the government, has resulted in an investment cycle in the country that’s very interesting for Juniper,” Rahim said.

Pushing for automation

He said that it is important for telcos to look at automation to free up their resources for more important things such as scaling up their networks and looking at new revenue opportunities. “Biggest problem for telcos today is that the networks have become too complicated and difficult to manage. That locks up talent, slows telcos down, it prevents them from investing in areas that allow them to grow revenues,” he said.

“The competition in the mobile space in this country, no one wants to be left in a situation where they cannot take more subscribers,” he said.