The growing global 5G equipment and solutions market offers a huge opportunity, and domestic information technology (IT) players, telco giants as well as smaller telecom gear-makers are moving in aggressively to grab a share of the pie. Bharti Airtel has just announced a strategic alliance with TCS to build 5G networks based on open radio access network (O-RAN) technology to roll out products and solutions initially for India, and later the world.

       This will entail taking on Reliance Jio, which is readying trial runs of its 5G O-RAN solutions in several Indian cities. IT companies ...