Summary

  • India’s TEC opened comments on a 2026 draft Generic Requirements standard for 5G Core; the consultation closes on 24 November.
  • Clause 2.13 would require every component of a virtualized system, including management and orchestration and the VNF/CNF repository, to be hosted in India.

Where may the software that builds and manages a mobile core run? India’s Telecommunication Engineering Centre has put a direct answer into a draft standard: inside India.

TEC published a draft Generic Requirements (GR) standard for 5G Core on 25 September and invited comments through 24 November. It is a proposal, not the operative edition. TEC’s standards register still lists TEC 22160:2023 as the published 5G Core GR for Type Approval.

The proposed location rule reaches beyond the network functions themselves. Clause 2.13 says all components of a virtualized system must be hosted in India, naming management and orchestration (MANO) and the virtualized network-function and cloud-native network-function repository as examples. In plain terms, the rule covers both software that coordinates network functions and the store from which those functions are deployed.

That makes this more than a clause about where subscriber records sit. The draft draws a territorial line around part of the system that configures, deploys and maintains the virtualized core. For a buyer, classification in the procurement record decides which vendor components fall inside the boundary.

The draft allocates other decisions differently. Its type-approval section calls for reports from a TEC-designated laboratory against mandatory requirements and a field trial that may last at least three weeks. A vendor can offer optional requirements or leave them out, with an undertaking for optional items not offered or marked “Not Applicable.” Chapter 11 then tells procurers to examine optional interfaces and features and specify the ones they want in tender conditions.

So the architecture has two hands on the controls. TEC proposes a non-optional location boundary for virtualized-system components. Procurers choose which optional functions and interfaces they will buy for a particular deployment. A tender can tailor the feature set; the draft does not give it a similar option to waive the hosting clause.

That division is the point to examine before the comment window closes. “Hosted in India” is a short phrase carrying a wide scope: the draft says “all components,” then gives MANO and the function repository as examples. The final hosting definition and audit procedure, still absent from the 88-page draft, will determine how remote and subcontracted operations fall within the rule.

The draft also states that 5G Core should guarantee 99.999% system availability and avoid any single point of failure. Those words make the standard’s boundary choices consequential, but the current story is about the location rule: a requirement can shape the system’s operating geography before anyone has reported a deployment result.

The published register and the consultation page must be read together. The first still names the 2023 GR; the second invites comments on a 2026 draft. Until the new text is finalized and enters the standards register, it describes a proposed boundary. The next public record that changes the status is the final TEC standard, not the existence of a draft PDF.

Sources