Lately, the Indian government had said that 5G deployment will occur by the end of this year. However, it seems that the government’s ban on telecom gear made in China would sabotage the launch. Earlier, the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) had given a waiver that had allowed Orginal Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) to import network equipment from its Chinese factories. Telecom operators and non-Chinese network equipment vendors are in trouble now as the waiver expired on June 15.
If the NSCS does not extend the waiver, the introduction of 5G will be hampered. In the current scenario, top European and US vendors cannot import certain network equipment from China. And, that is critical for the deployment of the 5G network.
Ever since the Galwan incident, the Indian government has been sceptical about telecom vendors. Chinese gear-makers were banned from providing network equipment. For non-Chinese vendors, the import of network equipment from their China factories was banned. To overcome this, vendors like Nokia, Ericsson, Cisco, Dell and HP convinced the NSCS to allow a one-year waiver. However, the waiver did not get renewed after June 15.
According to top executives from the telecom sector, without allowing the import from Chinese factories, the deployment of 5G will be difficult. It is because most of the OEMs have very small production bases in India. That is not sufficient for the launch. Moreover, China is the manufacturing hub for telecommunications equipment. That means they have the additional capacity to meet the requirements.
Now, the network vendors have asked the government for an additional 12-month leeway or a quota of network deployments to cover the initial 5G deployments. In order to address the government’s security concerns, vendors are willing to share details of products imported from China.
