5G small cells are going to play a pivotal role in the 5G experience that Indian consumers have in the cities. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) conducted a pilot 5G small cell deployment project with a few parties, including the Indian telecom operators, Bengaluru Metro, Smart City Bhopal, and more. The aim of the pilot was to determine the challenges that would arise during the widescale deployment of small cells. Now, TRAI has listed the challenges that were discovered and also has recommendations for solutions. But right now, we will only focus on the challenges; recommendations will be focused on later. Read More - 5G in India: TRAI Testing the Use of Street Furniture
Challenges for Deploying 5G Small Cells in India
TRAI divided the challenges into different categories for a better understanding. Take a look at all of them below:
A) Challenges Related to Street Furniture:
Small cells require street furniture to be deployed upon. Suitable street furniture is required for 5G small cell deployment. Things such as structural strength, position, power availability, nearby OFC location, security restrictions, etc., play a major role.
B) Challenges Related to Backhaul:
It is also a challenge to determine the backhaul, whether to go with underground OFC or overground OFC or wireless backhaul, terms and conditions of sharing of fiber with authority, etc.
C) Challenges Around Power Provisioning at Street Furniture:
There are issues such as the availability of appropriate power AC/DC at sites. Then there are other things such as metering of the connection, tariff, procedure to get a new connection and more.
D) Challenges Related to Coordination:
There are complexities when it comes to street furniture, such as issues where there are multiple owners of the same street furniture, complex internal processes for seeking RoW permissions, etc.
E) Challenges to Find Suitable Equipment:
It is also a challenge to find suitable equipment which would meet the capacity, coverage and aesthetics requirements of authorities. It is important to choose the radio units of appropriate form factors such as weight and height according to the structural strength of the street furniture.
F) Challenges Related to Aligning Procedures:
There will also be challenges around aligning the rules/procedures/acts being followed by different authorities. This is because small cells were never originally included in the policies as they were not imagined to be used until the time 5G reached near us. These are all the challenges found by TRAI during the pilot project.
