Finnish telecom gear maker Nokia on Thursday said major uptake of 5G in the country is expected in the second half of the current year on the back of growing video consumption, gaming and high speed 5G fixed wireless broadband to the homes.
Nokia, which is one of the major suppliers of equipment for 5G rollout, expects 5G data consumption at 43.7 exabyte and 150 million 5G subscribers by 2024. According to Nokia’s India Mobile Broadband Index, 4G and 5G data account for 100% of the total mobile data traffic currently.
The initial trends of data consumption suggests that 5G has started picking up across circles and 5G traffic in metro is 3-5% of total data traffic as of December 2022, according to Nokia.
“By 2027, the current data consumption of 19.5 GB per user per month could more than double to almost 43 GB and a large portion of this doubling will happen because of 5G. So, as 5G networks rollout this year and next year, and it becomes more robust, more available and a stronger network, we believe that would be another inflection point in the consumption of data in India,” said Amit Marwah, head of marketing and corporate affairs at Nokia India.
Marwah added that with a significant growth in the data consumption due to 5G, India could soon be amongst the top two or three countries with highest data consumption. In the last five years, the mobile data consumption in the country witnessed a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.02%, Nokia said. Last year, the average monthly data traffic grew 13.6% y-o-y (year-on-year).
A major uptake in 5G in the country will also be dependent on the penetration of 5G smartphones. In 2022, 5G smartphone shipments were around 70 million and according to Nokia, cumulative 5G smartphone shipments will cross the 100-million mark in the April-June quarter, even surpassing 4G smartphone shipments by the end of 2023.
Currently, in India 730 million are 4G capable devices and out of that 85 million are also 5G enabled. Apart from the 5G data consumption, Nokia expects the total spend on private wireless networks in the country to increase to $240 million by 2027. “Private wireless network is experiencing a lot of traction across the globe. India’s market is evolving as future enterprise business revenues are pegged at almost 40% of overall 5G revenues,” Nokia said.
According to Marwah, the discussions around enterprises adopting private 5G network are positive and given the 5G push for growing industrial usecases, India is expected to have over 2,000 sites for private wireless network by 2027.
Sectors like manufacturing, utilities, and transportation will constitute the majority of private wireless network deployment. Further, Nokia’s report also projects these sectors to constitute over 44% of the total wireless sites in the country by 2027.
