India’s 5G push! Excitingly waiting for Nokia Software’s

India’s 5G telecom network is the most awaited project for Nokia Software. Deploying 5G networks commercially in the United States, South Korea, and Japan has made a case for cooperating in the pilot runs citing its expertise.

“India is both a very important talent base and large, the local market for us,” said Bhaskar Gorti, President of Nokia Software, adding that the business was a hidden jewel of the telecom infrastructure and networking major.

“5G is actually an end-to-end scenario. You not only have to upgrade the radio, but you also have to upgrade the backhaul, you have to upgrade the edge and core networking and access networking, then you have to upgrade that fiber in the last mile,” Gorti said. “We have a unique advantage that we have homegrown native technologies in every part of that value chain.”

5G, unlike technologies before it, isn’t reliant only on hardware. In fact, experts believe that improvements in networking speeds and capabilities will come from software embedded within the hardware. Theevolving technology will shift the power of development to countries such as India which have excelled in building a base of networking software specialists.

Nokia is also looking to build cloud-based solutions that leverage the advantages of 5G such as low-latency and high throughput, broadening its services base beyond being a mere network solutions provider. A large chunk of this work is being handled by Nokia’s India unit.