With 5G here, data is the new alcohol

In a very short period of time, we shall speak of 4G in the same manner that we speak of telegrams and STD calls, both of which are no longer in our lives.
(Express Illustrations | Soumyadip Sinha)
(Express Illustrations | Soumyadip Sinha)

The biggest buzz in our lives in recent weeks has been the 5G auction in India and the Indian government’s ability to raise a stupendous ₹1.5 lakh crore out of four telecom players. I call it the JAVA wars. Jio, Airtel, Vodafone-Idea and Adani bid frantically for seven continuous days over 40 rounds of bidding, and emerged with a kitty of 5G airwaves that are set to shape the future of communication in India.

Reliance-Jio led the way with a win of 24,780 MHZ for a whopping ₹88,078 cr. It was followed by Airtel (₹43,084 cr) and Vodafone (₹18,799 cr). The Adani group did their own pick for captive private needs with a ₹212 cr spend. And thus began Version 3.0 of India’s telecommunications revolution.

India’s telecom history which started in 1850 with the introduction of the cable-telegraph has gone a long way to date. The first fifty years of the 1900s saw the move from cable to wireless to radio-telegraph. 1951 saw the first moves on India’s first television transmitter. 1960 brought in the first STD call route.

And then trundled in the optical fiber systems, eventually to the landmark year of 1995 when India saw its first mobile telephone service. I remember those early heady days. I remember carrying my first heavy mobile phone with an antenna attached, and driving (Note: it was not illegal to do it then) through the streets of Bengaluru, enjoying the attention it and I got as a result.

To those of us who have been through the early years of cumbersome communications of the era gone by, what we witness today with 4G is itself a miracle of sorts. Imagine the plight of watching your mother wanting to check on the health of your grandfather in Mumbai, waiting by the landline telephone set for a booked trunk call to come through over a two to three-hour wait. All for a two to three-minute conversation that cost a princely three days of a working woman’s salary. Gone are those days. Today, at the press of a speed-dial button, you can speak to who you want and where you want.

In many ways, the 2G to 4G spectrum revolution Indian telecom has seen—has transformed the way we live, the way we work and indeed, the way we play. The tensions of life have eased up a bit, if not a lot.

Today, India is the second largest in the world, both in terms of the number of telephone users as well as in the number of broadband internet users. We are a nation of ‘Roti, kapda, makaan and telecom’. And rightly so—the telecom sector accounts for 7% of India’s GDP, contributing as many as three million direct jobs to the employment economy.

What’s the big change with 5G then? Why are the telcos spending so much on bandwidth? And what’s ahead in store? How will it change my life?

The first prognosis I would like to make about the 5G revolution ahead, is by emphasising on the simple fact that we have seen nothing like it before. And when we see it happen, we are going to get excited. It will, however, take its own sweet time to happen. The first phase of the rollout has 13 cities listed across the three major telcos. And in these cities itself, I do believe we will see an earlier and deeper degree of adoption in the business districts as opposed to the non-business hotspots. However, all said and done, high-speed and high quality of communication has a habit of replacing lesser bandwidth formats globally.

5G as we will know it in the immediate future will get us to save time and do things faster than ever before. Imagine the role of 5G and 5G-enabled services in our lives. Imagine a lag-free connectivity without the irritation of buffering and call drops. Imagine internet speeds that are 10X faster than 4G. And imagine further still, the ability for billions of connected devices of every kind—from your refrigerator to your car to your air-conditioner to your motorcycle—to seamlessly connect with one another and share data in real-time and apply it to daily life. If somebody said “Data is the new oil”, I would say it was, once upon a time. Today, data is the new alcohol. The heady alcohol of the superspeed connectivity that the future generation of consumers will live in and take for granted in the future.

In a very short period of time, we shall speak of 4G in the same manner that we speak of telegrams and STD calls, both of which are no longer in our lives. Expect immediately then the ability to download very heavy and loaded content on your mobile phone in seconds. And expect to make those HD video calls to all and sundry. Expect big traction in the spaces of education, healthcare delivery, agriculture (including sensor-based farming), manufacturing and e-governance for sure.

5G will bring cloud gaming to center-stage attention. You will need no gaming console anymore. 5G will connect ambulances to offer speedier and better medical care. It will also track cattle on the farms, look after manufacturing on the shop floor, help you spray insecticide on your crop and do all of the 856-odd listed applications written as an ode to it.

Everything is going to get seamlessly connected, seamlessly tracked, and in the bargain, you are on a tracking grid you can’t escape anymore. Every step you take is tracked and every breath you breathe is analysed—anonymously of course, with anonymised data as the norm. In many ways, you and I in the era of 5G will be contributing to the whole in a more real manner than ever before.

We are parts of the data that will paint the picture of the whole. No one will be able to tell which part of the picture you are, but without you and I, the picture will be incomplete.

Must I then close with Rumi? “You are not just a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop!” And 5G will make that possible!

Harish Bijoor

Brand Guru & Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc

Related Stories

No stories found.
The New Indian Express
www.newindianexpress.com