What will be the Impact of 5G Revolution on the Indian Telecom Industry?

2018 will be known as the year of 4G in India. Extensive 4G network expansion undertaken by the telecom operators led to the remarkable growth of the mobile internet subscribers and consumption. This, coupled with a significant drop in the prices of smartphone and the intense tariff war between telcos, fuelled the mobile broadband market in the country.

While discussing the 5G revolution taking over the world, Tilak Raj Dua, Director General, TAIPA tells VoicenData how 5G technology in India will help the country leapfrog from traditional barriers to development.

He believes that with 5G technology, India will build momentum to achieve ‘Digital India’ vision, smart cities and state of the art solution for various sectors. 5G will enable both existing and new wireless service providers to develop novel business models to offer innovative applications to individuals and to different economic verticals from industrial, commercial, educational, healthcare, agricultural, financial and social sectors. The cumulative impact of 5G on India can reach one trillion USD by 2035.

The lower latency and higher reliability of 5G network will lead to exponential growth in IoT, M2M, AI, AR, VR, blockchain and fixed wireless high-speed broadband network. Further, with the estimated 12-fold data growth due to online high-definition content consumption, the Indian telecom industry is set to embrace the new business models, technology solutions, revenue streams and application led growth.

For 5G success, it is important that the Indian telecom industry and its stakeholders in the country invests in developing a robust physical layer of telecom infrastructure, technology layer and software application layer at the right time to ensure economies of scale and greater return on investments. As envisaged in NDCP 2018, it is estimated that 100-billion-dollar investment by 2022 will be infused in the telecom sector majority of which will be made for 5G ecosystem development.

Further, as per our understanding, initially, the most relevant 5G use case for India will start from enterprise businesses like mobility, logistics, energy, healthcare and manufacturing etc. Further, as the market matures and with the availability of affordable 5G enabled handset devices the 5G usage would percolate down to individual consumers.