IIT-Madras and Nokia on Tuesday announced a three-year partnership to explore the possibility of using unlicensed radio spectrum to deliver broadband connectivity.
Nokia’s vice president and Head of India Region Sandeep Girotra said at a press conference that the company would fund the project through its Corporate Social Responsibility research programme for rural development. Both IIT-M and Nokia refused to divulge the quantum of funding. Nokia will also provide technological expertise to IIT-M’s Centre of Excellence for Wireless Technology (CEWiT).
A joint statement released to the press said that the project would try to develop technologies that would harness unlicensed spectrum, “to complement the government’s National Optical Fibre Network initiative.”
Multefire Alliance
Responding to a question, Mr. Girotra said that he was not aware of similar efforts anywhere else in the world, with the caveat that he could possibly not be aware of all such developments. However, there have been recent developments in his backyard: Nokia is a founding partner of the Multefire Alliance, an industry association formed in California on December 16 last year.
In its own words, “MulteFire Alliance is an international association dedicated to building a global ecosystem in support of the common interests of members, developers and users in the application of Long Term Evolution (LTE) and next generation mobile cellular technology in configurations that use only unlicensed radio spectrum.” Along with Qualcomm, Ericsson and Intel, Nokia is now a Sponsor Member of the Alliance. The name of the alliance comes from Multefire of Qualcomm, which was announced on June 11 last year via a blog post on the company’s website. The post described it as, “....a new, LTE-based technology that solely operates in unlicensed spectrum, and doesn’t require an “anchor” in licensed spectrum.”
June 11, 2015 was incidentally the day when comments were due on a Federal Communications Commission notice seeking information on LTE-U and LAA technology. In its notice, the FCC said it was responding after a number of organisations approached the Commission, “….about the development of LTE-U and LAA in the context of the 3.5 GHz and 5 GHz proceedings, which would make spectrum available for general access and unlicensed use, respectively. Some have expressed concern that LTE-U and LAA [Licensed Assisted Access] operations may have a detrimental impact on existing and future use of unlicensed or shared spectrum.” In a sign of how big the fight over LTE-U is set to become, Google, AT&T and Cisco were among those who responded.
Talking to this newspaper later, Babu Narayanan K.J., Chief Technologist at CEWiT, said the IIT-M project will probably use elements from Multefire. “We will need to use already-manufactured chips and at the moment, it looks like the Qualcomm’s Multefire will be in the lead when available,” he said. Indications are that Multefire will remain the foundation on which indigenous technology will piggyback. “Multefire in itself is not suitable for Indian conditions. We need to tweak it to suit our requirements,” said Narayanan. Among others, he was referring to outdoor use, for which Multefire is not designed.
The IIT-M project envisages a base station, connected to the National Optical Fibre Network, wirelessly providing broadband connectivity to villages maybe as far as 20 km away. Fourth generation LTE signals will be used to “haul” the connection over such large distances while WiFi technology will be used to provide broadband at the village. Apart from outdoor-use, Indian scientists will have to devise a way to “haul” the connection; Narayanan said that his team will also look at the possibility of targeting the signal, where particular villages will receive it instead of having to send blasts indiscriminately.
IIT-M Director Bhaskar Ramamurthi said that while he was unaware of the Multefire Alliance, it did not have any impact on the project proposal. “The project proposal was conceived by us, not by Nokia. The commercial alliances of the kind you speak of are irrelevant to an institution like ours,” he said. He said that for anyone looking to deliver affordable last-mile broadband connectivity, LTE and WiFi are the best options. He said Nokia would not benefit if the project succeeded. For Dr. Ramamurthi, the focus remains firmly on the potential benefits of the project for rural India: “There are no deliverables for Nokia. If we are successful, the whole of India benefits.” Nokia will be involved throughout the project and will share resources with IIT-M.
CSR obligations
A Nokia spokesperson who did not want to be quoted for the story said that the company had not flouted CSR rules to fund the initiative. “We have painstakingly gone through the rules to ensure that we have met all the CSR obligations for the project,” said the individual. A representative of the company who too did not want to be quoted stressed that while Multefire would be among the technologies suited for the project, it would entirely be upon the IIT-M team to assess what they want to choose.
Both IIT-M and Nokia refused to divulge the quantum of funding
