‘We are more of a consultant in 5G ecosystem’: Corning Wireless VP

“There was a lot of hype in the beginning, companies have come…companies have gone but now we are for the first time starting to see those use cases take off,” Marc Bolick – Vice President, Corning Wireless sees the evolution of “fifth generation” (5G) mobile internet from being a nascent technology to more widely applicable as it gets rollout across the world.
Bolick, who was in India at the opening of Corning’s new wireless software center of excellence in Gurugram, Haryana, says building a robust 5G ecosystem is critical to facilitate successful 5G operations. “We can talk about the technology, but you really need the ecosystem first,” Bolick told in an interview.
“When we talk to the government, we talk to the carriers, we talk to the entire ecosystem, we are more of a consultant and a trusted adviser than anything else,” he said.
Corning’s new facility in India will focus on developing software solutions for the telecommunications industry, becoming a hub for software development and systems engineering. This is Corning’s third major technology center, the other being in Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv. Bolick said the India facility will work closely with the company’s Silicon Valley center to provide cloud-based overran software that enables its 5G products.

“When you think about wireless, there are lots of places in the world you can go for software, lots of places you can go for wireless, lots of places you can go for systems engineering, there are very few that you can get all three,” Bolick reasoned why the company chose India for a major software development center. Corning gradually plans to increase the team working at the newly inaugurated software development center.
The opening of Corning’s new wireless development center in India comes at a time when the country’s top operators – Reliance Jio and Airtel plan to roll out 5G services starting next month. 5G mobile internet promises download and browsing speeds 10 to 20 times faster than 4G. The internet of things (IoT) can expect a big boost from 5G cellular technology and so is the retail sector.
5G will represent around 39 per cent of mobile subscriptions in the second-most populous country at the end of 2027, with about 500 million subscriptions, according to a report Swedish telecom gear maker Ericsson.
Known for its Gorilla Glass for smartphones, Corning also has ventures in environmental science and optical communications. Corning supplies glass for a variety of Apple products, including the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.