Samsung India on Friday signed an MoU with the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME)

NEW DELHI: Samsung India on Friday signed an MoU with the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) to open two more technical training schools and to renew the partnership for 10 existing schools being run across the country.

As per the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), the technology giant will open two new MSME-Samsung Technical Schools in Bengaluru and Jamshedpur, the company said in a statement.


Source : ETTelecom

"We are committed to creating an industry-ready workforce and provide industry-oriented skills to our youth under the Skill India programme. Samsung has been a valuable partner in our quest to create a vast pool of talent," Kalraj Mishra, Union Minister for MSME, said in a statement.

Reinforcing its commitment to the government's "Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao" campaign, Samsung also announced the MSME-Samsung Technical School Scholarship programme for girls and differently-abled trainees. A Meritorious Reward Programme for toppers at these institutes has also been launched.

Under the MSME-Samsung Technical School Scholarship programme, 1,000 girls and differently-abled trainees, who have successfully completed the basic course, will be given a scholarship of up to Rs 20,000.

The toppers among Samsung Technical School students will also be given a reward of Rs 20,000.

"The government, with its 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Yojana', has been trying to generate awareness about various welfare schemes for girls in the country," Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Union Minister for Food Processing, said.

Meanwhile, H.C. Hong, President and CEO of Samsung Southwest Asia, said: "Samsung is proud to help impart technical skills to youth of this country. Our collaboration with the Ministry of MSME has enabled us to tap the potential of youth and make them job-ready with the help of the Samsung Technical School initiative."

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Indian Telecom is in a mess. Here's why

At Rs 4 lakh crore, banks' exposure to the telecom sector is staggeringly high -- enough to raise eyebrows over concerns regarding the long-term viability of the business. Here is a brief look at how it came to a sad pass.

At Rs 4 lakh crore, banks' exposure to the telecom sector is staggeringly high -- enough to raise eyebrows over concerns regarding the long-term viability of the business. The recent downgrades of Reliance Communications debt is perhaps the first nail in the coffin for the sector, which is finally waking up the idea of consolidation amid strong competition from Reliance Industries-owned Jio.

Here's how the industry ran into a quagmire of debt.

The Factors

Post liberalisation of the economy in 1993, the industry's main turning point came in 2008, when India logged into the 3G craze. Two years later, 3G-enabled mobile and data services were launched, which saw private operators entering the fray with their services. This, forever, changed the consumption patterns of telecom users.

The result was visible. After US and Japan, India boasted the third largest number of Internet users of whom 40 percent use a mobile phone to access the web.

India also ranks as one of the cheapest providers of broadband speed in the world.

The large capital required for the setup of infrastructure and for the right of way on the broadband spectrum, a complicated tariff system and a lack of domestic content were challenges which led to the rise in broadband.

The Spectrum Auctions:

Since 2010, the government has been opening up spectrum on certain frequencies to telecom operators. In FY16, with many of the players in debt, and facing competition, the government raised Rs 65,789.12 crore in revenue, falling short of its estimation. This figure paled in comparison to the Rs 1.1 lakh crore takings from the last auction held in March 2015.

Additionally, the capital expenditure has shot up significantly in the last decade as the operators have been improving the efficiency of their networks as well as accommodating the exponential growth in data consumption.

The entry of Reliance Jio proved to be a disruptive force in the industry. Its free voice and data services, which were offered first in September 2016, caused competitors Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular to bring down tariffs, leading to a major deflation of prices.

Data packs of up to 2 GB saw prices being slashed by around 67 percent, whereas 1 GB packs saw prices slashed up to 45 percent.

Such pricing measures have raised concerns about mobile data revenue growth in the short-term and long-term sustainability in terms of revenue generation.

According to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) data, broadband subscribers in India at the end of October 2016 stood at 218.42 million. Of that lot, almost 200 million accessed the internet through mobile devices or dongles. Also, almost 75 percent of telecom companies’ revenue comes from voice.

Thus, the rising operational costs, which include the debt undertaken for the spectrum auctions, as well as the deferred payments for such auctions and the slashed tariff rates to remain afloat in the market have kept the operators under high pressure.

While the big leagues have a healthy rainy-day fund to support themselves, smaller telecoms will either have to exit or get absorbed.

The Path Ahead:

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday said that banks ought to provide a higher provisioning for the telecom sector, beginning from the current quarter. A plan is also in the pipeline to allow the tenure of payable loans owed by telecom players to be extended.

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ABI Research forecasts worldwide fixed wireless broadband subscribers will grow at a 30% CAGR to top 151 million in 2022.

Exponential growth of 4G LTE coverage and capacity is driving wireless service growth for fixed broadband access, while fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), xDSL, and cable technologies reach nearly 50% of global households. As 5G standardization approaches completion, the technology will significantly accelerate global fixed wireless deployments. ABI Research forecasts worldwide fixed wireless broadband subscribers will grow at a 30% CAGR to top 151 million in 2022.

“The arrival of 5G technology will completely transform fixed wireless broadband network deployments,” says Khin Sandi Lynn, Industry Analyst at ABI Research. “Trials show that the technology’s superior performance over LTE will allow operators to deploy 5G for fixed wireless broadband service in densely populated areas.”

Currently, fixed LTE broadband access is mainly deployed in remote areas where fixed line infrastructure is poor and it is not commercially feasible to deploy fixed networks. While government initiatives, high data transfer rates, and a large capacity are all attractive features for fixed LTE deployments now, fixed wireless broadband deployments will be further accelerated by their 5G successor in the years ahead.

United States operators AT&T and Verizon already announced plans to deliver broadband access to businesses and residential customers using 5G fixed wireless networks. The companies aim to begin 5G fixed wireless rollouts later this year.

“Superior capacity offered by 5G technology will benefit operators to deploy fixed wireless access in densely populated areas,” concludes Lynn. “This will enable fiber-like broadband service to support bandwidth-hungry applications without the need to install fiber-optic cables to each premise.”

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Gigabit LTE is expected to account for 70% of LTE Advanced Pro subscriptions by 2026

ABI Research forecasts LTE will grow from approximately 30% of global mobile subscriptions in 2017 to 50% in 2024. The most advanced LTE service, Gigabit LTE, is expected to near two million subscriptions globally in 2017, which is less than 5% of LTE Advanced Pro subscriptions in 2017. Gigabit LTE devices, launched in 2017, will far exceed the subscription numbers, as few cell sites are expected to reach Gigabit LTE speeds in 2017. Gigabit LTE is a pivotal piece of an advanced 4G mobile network that can support an operator’s mobile service goals over the next six to eight years and beyond.

“Gigabit LTE is a specific configuration of the LTE Advanced Pro standard and is expected to account for 70% of LTE Advanced Pro subscriptions by 2026,” says Prayerna Raina, Senior Analyst at ABI Research. “It is a critical network milestone for operators in an increasingly competitive environment in the evolution to 5G. It is essential for operators to support the ever-rising bandwidth needs of consumers, while also upgrading the network to support 5G networks in future.”

As Gigabit LTE offers higher bandwidth to consumers and very efficient use of spectrum for operators, ABI Research expect more operators to launch Gigabit LTE globally over the next year and a half. Sprint launched the first Gigabit LTE service for mobile devices was in New Orleans, Louisiana in March 2017. Telstra launched a Gigabit LTE mobile hotspot service in Sydney, Australia in February 2017, and is expected to support Gigabit LTE mobile devices as they become available. Monaco Telecom launched a mobile Gigabit LTE service in April 2017. ABI Research expects additional launches to take place this year from all key operators in the U.S., as well as by some operators in Asia, Europe, and Canada.

“Today, operators globally are in various stages of upgrading their LTE networks,” concludes Raina. “Over the next four to six years, we expect mobile networks to evolve considerably with the proliferation of LTE Advanced, LTE Advanced Pro, and Gigabit LTE on one hand and the launch of 5G on the other hand. The vendor ecosystem is essential to this network evolution with device availability being critical for the service launch. It is, therefore, imperative for vendors to align their competitive strategies with the operators’ network transition timeline as well as alliances in the ecosystem.”

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NGMN : 5G E2E Architecture framework; more on 'large scale convergence' at data plane.

The 5G system will also support flexible RAN structures including implementations based on Cloud principles and the placement of context awareness at the RAN edges (i.e. mobile edge computing). Both centralized and distributed implementation of RAN functions should be enabled to facilitate the realization of various RAN implementations. In addition, support for various coverage layers and cell sizes spanning extreme long-distance covering macro cells to small cell radio access deployments is required.

An open Perspective for LARGE SCALE CONVERGENCE, specially in case of data plane.

RAN Decomposition, Functional decomposition of the radio network is required to meet the diverse information transport demands (high performance to low performance) and align them with the demands of next-generation service categories of eMBB, mIoT, and URLLC. To accommodate these, a decomposition of the radio network protocol layer functions, across layer-1, layer-2, and layer-3 is required, in terms of the degree of centralisation or distribution.

This decomposition consists of placing more functions of the upper layers of the radio network protocol stack in distributed entities for high performance transport demands (e.g. high bandwidth, high-capacity, low-latency, low jitter etc.,) relative to a centralized entity. Scheduling optimisation at a centralized entity, for high performance transport across multiple distributed entities (e.g. base stations, remote radio heads etc.) for fast coordination is critical requirement.

For relatively low performance transport, more of the upper layer of the radio network protocol stack is placed at a centralized entity to optimize the cost/performance trade-off, associated with the distributed entities. This choice of functional split will determine the x-haul capacity requirement and associated latency specifications and performance. This will impact the network architecture as it could determine the placement of nodes and distance between them or, in the case of a higher layer split, will be tolerant of a large latency from a RAN perspective which may be excessive when low-latency services are considered, therefore bounds must be applied within the network architecture to enable a service provider to support low latency services.

A distributed RAN (D-RAN) with several functional splits will be supported by 5G. Figure 1 illustrates the configuration with co-located centralised unit (CU) and distributed (DU). All radio protocol layers are terminated within the cell site.

The connection from the cell site towards the core network is traditional mobile backhaul which will be scaled and optimised to support 5G data rates and performance targets such as low-latency, low PELR, low and very deterministic PDV etc. The D-RAN configuration does not constrain the ability of the local CU to support remote DU; in fact the cell site could become a CU for other cells sub-tended as illustrated in Figure 2.

A 5G C-RAN can be implemented with a higher layer split with the protocols stack with PDCP being located in the CU while the remainder of the stack is in the DU, as shown in Figure 3. This is one example; other splits will result in a different distribution of functionality between CU and DU.

This configuration has similar x-haul capacity requirements when compared with traditional backhaul, the latency and performance requirements of the RAN are not stringent and therefore consideration must be given to engineer the x-haul link in accordance with service-based latency and performance targets.

170511 ngmn e2_e_archframework_v0.6.5 from Saurabh Verma