India’s 5G telecom network rendezvous around the 'Make in India' initiative has taken to Bharti Airtel-Tata combined and Reliance Jio which made trails using their own equipment.

Bharti Airtel’s trials with Tata is set for next year between April and May to be done way ahead of its deployment of commercial networks across the country.

TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) on the other hand, plans to work with 4G by supplying its 4G stack with BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited). Also, TCS had joined hands with Airtel and were engaged in efforts to make it happen.


Tata also bought Tejas Network to supply transmissions and provide a backhaul to Airtel. CIO Insider reported that Tata agreed to buy Tejas Network controlling stake in the company for Rs.2,888.6 crore ($ 388.5 million). This means that the latter's company, Panatone Finvest, has already witnessed the execution of definitive agreements from the former.

Tata's holding company is expected to invest Rs 1,850 crore in preferential and warrant subscriptions.It has announced an open offer to buy up to 26 percent more of the company from public shareholders for a total of Rs 1,038.6 crore. According to SEBI Takeover Regulations, Panatone and other Tata group firms would make an open offer to buy up to 4.03 crore Tejas Networks equity shares, representing 26 percent of the total voting capital.

Tata will most likely be able to hold 63.1 percent of Tejas' expanded share capital if the offer is accepted in its entirety. Tejas' shares jumped five percent to Rs 246 per share on the BSE as a result, above its regular five percent restriction.

In the course of the country’s trials with 5G, it’s said that Chinese vendors will be prohibited in the 5G space and that there was space for another vendor to come in.

In Navi Mumbai, Reliance Jio has begun trial runs of its indigenous 5G core, 5G RAN, for which it has secured government approval. It has confirmed network-slicing functionality for a real-time streaming entertainment slice, according to sources, using its own 5G RAN and 5G standalone combination core.

Last year, the company tested its 5G core on a Verizon network in the US while waiting for spectrum from the Indian government.

The effort is crucial as it would help India become a prominent player in the 5G Open RAN network sector by developing indigenous network capabilities.

Reliance Jio announced in June that it would create and sell its own 5G network, which set off the push toward indigenous manufacturing. In the same month, the government announced a production-linked incentive scheme for telecom equipment, with incentives totaling over Rs 12,195 crore. Nokia, Flextronics, Jabil, Foxconn, HFCL, and Tejas are among the companies that have signed up for the program (now Tatas).

“We have missed this opportunity many times before, when telecom equipment manufacturers chose to go to China or Vietnam rather than India. We need to reintroduce manufacturing to India, and I believe there is light at the end of the tunnel, and we can become a major player”, says Sunil Mittal, Chairman, Bharti Airtel.