A retrospective of the Indian Telecom Industry in 2022: Analysis by experts

Since the pandemic, our reliance on the telecom industry has grown immensely, and permeated every aspect of our lives. As a result, the need for robust networks and improved connectivity has also increased. The telecom industry has done a commendable job of meeting this growing demand in 2022. The government approved structural and procedural improvements in the telecom sector have had a favorable effect for the industry in the past year.

With 1.17 billion subscribers, including both wireless and landline connections, as of August 2022, India’s telecom sector is the second-largest in the world. The telecom sector has achieved numerous firsts this year, with 5G being the stand-out, thanks to changing consumer habits, awareness about technology and extending widely used 3G and 4G coverage.

As 2022 draws to a close, industry experts, professionals and advisors shared their views on what worked for the Telecom industry in 2022 and what can be expected of the industry in 2023. Have a look:

Arvind Bali, CEO, Telecom Sector Skill Council: “2022 was a phenomenal year for the telecom and skilling industries. Both saw significant reforms in both policies and initiatives which have elevated their contribution in nation building. We at Telecom SSC have been closely working with both ministries and secretaries to enhance the aspirations of the youth to work in new fields like 5G, IoT, Drone tech and many more. Shri K Rajaraman (Secretary, DoT) has been personally driving the telecom skilling initiative with monthly review meetings to ensure availability of adequate skilled workforce for the next wave in telecom. Over the next 3 years, we will be training over 1 lac budding youth in these technologies and many more. We plan to add 10 CoEs and the 1 lac training is being done with DoT oversight. We are going to add 100 new courses to our roster for use cases in both legacy and new technologies. The rollout of 5G will help accelerate advancement in skilling and telecom. We lend our support to the government and industry initiatives to empower the next generation of India.”

Nokia India Spokesperson: “2022 has been a landmark year for the telecom sector. Nokia has been greatly encouraged by the pace and efficiency of 5G spectrum allocations in India and the extension of the PLI scheme. We reaffirm our commitment to enable our partners achieve rapid 5G deployment – likely to be one of the fastest rollouts in the world. Major CSPs have announced plans to have a pan-India 5G presence by end of 2023 or early 2024 and we are supporting the implementation of several thousand sites across various circles every week. In 2023, we hope to see continued Government support in enabling the digital ecosystem to truly tap the benefits of the socio-economic applications of 5G technology. 2023 is also expected to witness wider adoption of private networks by enterprises and businesses for enhanced efficiency and security. Further, we hope to support India’s full and equal participation in the evolution of 6G standards in the next few years as our R&D engineers based here continue to contribute to the collaborative global effort.”

Jagdish Mitra, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Growth, Tech Mahindra: “The digital landscape evolved rapidly in 2022, and with Hon’ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi launching 5G services, India is poised to lead the new era of digital revolution. Powered by India's promising growth roadmap, 2023 has the potential to provide the impetus required for India to become digitally ready and to lead technological advancements for the rest of the world to follow. The advancement of existing technologies and the emergence of new trends have reshaped our working patterns and ushered in significant transformations across industries. Artificial intelligence, for example, has become a reality in businesses, and other technologies such as metaverse, blockchain, robotics, and digital twins are expected to follow the suit in the coming years. Furthermore, the adoption of Industry 4.0 has strengthened the supply chain ecosystem, transformed manufacturing, and instilled resilience in enterprise operations. We at Tech Mahindra believe that these tech trends coupled with SAAS as the delivery model will unlock immense potential for businesses in India and help boost the Indian economy like never before and are hence calling them out as our big bets for the future of tech. I believe in 2023, we will see significant progress in autonomous systems, 5G, and green technology, as well as a quantum leap in technological skilling to digital transformation-related skilling. With digitization sweeping the globe, these emerging technology trends will define the 'Techade' and put India on the map as a technology superpower. India has the potential to take the lead in technological innovation, and 2023 will see a continued push toward sustainable progress, supported by newer sustainable technology trends."

Anku Jain, Managing Director, MediaTek India: “During 2022, MediaTek succeeded in delivering on the 5G aspirations of OEMs while also maintaining the 4G/5G mobile volume share leadership with a focus on the mid-level category. Flagship-level smartphones with superior cameras, gaming, and high-end display caught the wide attention. Ground-breaking launches like MediaTek Dimensity 9200 and Dimensity 9000 have brought new benchmark performance for 5G smartphones. MediaTek maintained its leadership in Smart TVs, smart speakers/displays, and Arm Chromebook and emerged as No.1 in the Wi-Fi segment across Retail, Broadband and Consumer Devices. MediaTek is a leader in Mobile PMIC, Computing & Display and succeeded in developing an exhaustive 5G technology portfolio. We are driven by our vision to deliver incredible technologies to power incredible lives and going forward we will expand our 5G portfolio to 5G Thin Modem, redcap & wearables, automotive telematics and industrial M2M/IoT,  and focus on emerging trends like Metaverse, Wi-Fi 7, and power management applications in Computing & Storage of the future.”

Rajiv Bhalla, Managing Director, India & Vice President APAC, at Barco: “In 2022, we navigated the bend to lead the digital transformation and innovation disruption, powered by new-age technologies, and accelerated its amalgamation across operations and workflows. Fueled by India’s promising growth prospects, 2023 is truly going to be a ‘Techade’, given the focus on mega trends such as digitalization, R&D and innovation, local manufacturing, global offshoring, among others. As India is set to lead the G20 agenda in 2023, a lot of focus will be on India’s capabilities to power sustainable economic growth and development and thereby setting a precedence for others to follow. With the focus moving from technology usage across enterprises to leveraging emerging technologies for a better future, we foresee technologies like AL/ML, cloud computing, 5G, IoT and automation to drive sustainable solutions and new use cases across sectors, industries, governance and citizen services. The global enterprise IT spending estimated to increase significantly in the next year and there is going to be renewed demand for control room solutions, projection technologies and video wall solutions, smart infrastructure, hybrid collation solutions, among others.”  

Agendra Kumar, MD, Esri India: “Technology has indeed been the engine of change worldwide, and India has been the hub of many exciting technological developments in the past year. Customized solutions for solving India-centric problems are the need of the hour. Esri India’s IndoArcGIS which provides GIS-based solutions for a wide range of problems that we face as a country became very popular among our users. Moving ahead, technology trends like the integration of various types of data in GIS systems, data portals to enable easy sharing of data, and Geo-Hubs to create more collaborative working environments and increase community engagement are going to transform the way geospatial technologies are being consumed. Other trends like GeoAI, GIS on Cloud, digital twins, immersive experiences, and advanced spatial analytics will further cater to improved and secure solutions for industries and masses alike. These tech trends will help enterprises boost their speed and agility, reduce complexity and save costs while concurrently enabling unmatched connectivity.”