Speaking at a recent conference on 5th Generation (5G) telecommunication technologies, Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha said his government was committed to ensuring sufficient spectrum for the development of 5G networks. He added his ministry intended to keep pace with the rest of the world, which is targeting a 5G launch in 2020, and not be a laggard as was the case with 3G and 4G services.
The next generation 5G mobile technology can be truly revolutionising, promising as it does lightning high speeds up to 20 GB per second, as compared to 1 GB per second that the best of 4G services offer. These speeds make it possible to connect not only people, but homes and gadgets, cars and city infrastructure in one seamless universe creating what is called the “internet of things”.
But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride; and the government’s good intentions are not backed up by the infrastructure demanded. In India, 4G services unfortunately exist in name alone. According to industry tracker OpenSignal, in June this year, the average speed of 4G services had come down to 5.14 Mbps from 6.39 last November, ranking India at 74 out of 75 nations surveyed. Singapore’s 4G speed is nine times faster than India’s.
As the introduction of 4G by Jio’s Voice over Long-term Evolution (VoLTE) was resisted by 3G service providers, who saw their investments going up in smoke, there will be resistance to 5G too. Reliance Jio has pumped in a humongous $20 billion in creating its 4G services that are now only a year old. However, the biggest problem is infrastructure.
The formidable 5G network requires 100 per cent connectivity of mobile sites with optic fibre. In India, just 15 per cent of the 6 lakh towers are connected on optical fibre compared to 65-80 per cent in the case of US, Japan, Korea and China. Considering the investments involved, and efforts needed to get the service providers on board, even generous estimates say India will miss the 2020 5G bus, and we are looking at a launch closer to 2022.