Two years after the launch of 5G, while India has seen the fastest rollout of the network, the same cannot be said with regard to return on investments for the operators. Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) director general, SP Kochhar tells FE that enterprise use cases did not pick up as expected. Excerpts:
It’s been two years of 5G. How are you seeing the technology takeup?
Not only in India, but worldwide, when 5G was started, there was a lot of hope that machine and human interface would happen. A huge amount of machines would come on the network and earnings will come from the enterprise segment. Even at that point, telcos knew that B2C would not be very useful. If consumers are given the 5G data at a higher cost than 4G, they may not take it. However, giving it at the same cost, would lead to increase in infrastructure cost for telcos, that was known. This has proven right. Industry 4.0 did not work that is why sensors or IoT (internet of things) use cases did not come up and therefore enterprise 5G did not see much takeup. It will come but has been postponed for now.
Then do you think for the capex in 5G, we will not get ROI?
Business decisions worldwide have gone wrong on 5G. They were driven by manufacturers of 5G, they created a hype and then countries wanted to take the lead.
We are seeing the capex has been reduced by telcos in India also just because ROI is not seen at the moment. Business assumption was that sensors will come for enterprise use cases but those have not come.
Would it have been right to shift directly to 6G from 4G?
No, because the complete technology has shifted. It is not possible because machine and human interface has come for the first time in 5G. Earlier it was not there. It was possible from 2G to 4G.
Telcos are still pitching for OTT regulation when the Telecom Act has stated that it’s not in the purview of telecom department. Why this insistence?
When the draft came, OTT was mentioned, but after that it was removed. If you see the Act, it has the scope to include OTT communication services. The devil lies in the rules. The theme of the Act is generic, the rules will be specific. The Act has talked about communication services, rules will decide which communication service will be included. To say that OTT has been taken out of that, it is not correct, it can happen anytime.
On the right of way (RoW) issues, do challenges still persist?
This is a Central subject. It is mandatory for the state governments to follow the Telecom Act. The problem of RoW with regard to permission for digging and higher charges is coming from some Central as well as State bodies such as forests, railways, etc, which have their own rules. We are trying to get that resolved.
There is a debate on the 6 GHz band. Why do telcos need that band?
There is no imperative for Wi-Fi to ask for 6 GHz. When we bought spectrum in the mid-band that is 3300 MHz, we could get only 800 MHz because the band was not available. Our requirement to give 5G as projected is 2 GHz, which is 2000 Mhz. There, we have a deficiency of 1200 MHz. That cannot be made up, no matter how much densification you do. That will affect the quality of services. In 6 GHz, 1200 MHz is available and we can utilise that to give good quality services. Otherwise, the cost of infrastructure will increase as we would then need to have towers at a short distance.
