Roving Periscope: India ready to share indigenous 5-G with others, says Sitharaman
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: India has just launched its indigenously developed 5-G communication infrastructure and is ready to share it with other countries as well, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in Washington DC on Thursday.
Rolling out the 5-G services in select cities across India on October 2, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said the fifth-generation wireless telecom services for mobile phones will mark the beginning of a new era.
On its indigenously developed 5-G, India is immensely proud of its achievements, she said.
With this launch, India became only the fifth nation—after Finland, Sweden, South Korea, and China—to roll out an end-to-end ecosystem for 5-G.
“It is completely standalone. The story (of India’s 5G) is yet to reach the public,” Sitharaman said, interacting with students at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
We could import some components of this technology from countries like South Korea, but India’s 5-G is its own indigenous product, she added.
The 5-G services might cover the entire nation by 2024, the FM said.
Launching the new services, Modi had said this rollout will make sure the country played an active role in the development and implementation of technology, rather than remaining an end-user of imported technology. It would also reduce the technological and economic divide between rural and urban India.
He said this technology can expand the financial system, raise productivity and provide intensive development across all spheres of society. They should provide the MSME industry with opportunities to construct hardware components for the technological requirements of the telecom industry.
While Airtel chief Sunil Bharti Mittal said his company will roll out the 5-G services across India by March 2024, Reliance Jio’s Mukesh Ambani said his firm will do so by December 2023.
Modi said the 5-G rollout is the culmination of a series of policy steps his government undertook to aggressively expand technology resources. The average mobile internet user is currently using 14 GB of data per month. “In 2014, the price of 14 GB of data in India was nearly Rs. 4,200 per month. Now, the same data is available at Rs. 125-150,” he said.
Before 2014, India had 60 million broadband internet users, which has now grown to over 800 million. The number of total internet connections has also risen from just 20 million before 2014, to 850 million now, with more connections in rural India. Over 170,000 village panchayats are now also connected with optical fibers compared to just 100 panchayats before 2014.
Modi said that India is now home to over 200 mobile manufacturing units, as compared to only two before 2014. “India is in the second position in terms of mobile phone manufacturing. From importing 100 percent of our mobile phone requirements, we are now exporting them.”
Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnav said the 5-G services would change many sectors like education, health, agriculture, logistics, and banking. “Telecom is a foundation and gateway of Digital India. It is a medium to deliver digital services to the masses. Therefore, the socio-economic development of the country needs a healthy and strong telecom sector.”
The Indian economy is expected to rake in USD 455 billion between 2023 and 2040 because of 5-G, according to the GSM Association (GSMA), the global industry association representing over 750 mobile network operators.
The 5-G rollout will be key to the expansion of robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet of Things, which are the drivers of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
