'Difficult To Predict Widespread Rollout Of 5G In Rural Areas'

Speaking to BW Businessworld's Rohit Chintapali, Lt. Gen Dr S.P. Kochhar (Director General, COAI) elucidated on why it's hard to predict the rollout of 5G in rural areas of the country, role of 4G in 5G-era and COAI's interactions with the government  

Edited Excerpts:

5G is being hyped up as the next socioeconomic equaliser. So, what kind of actual potential do you see in 5G? Is it going to reach out to the consumers as much as it is being hyped?

Basically, 5G will connect machines, sensors and humans, and will put them onto one platform. Therefore, the efficiencies will go up, along with the interactions and automation. On the flip side, there will always be people on the dark side waiting to take advantage. Hence, there will be more challenges in the cybersecurity domain.

With 5G, sensors and IoT devices, the machine-to-machine communication are going to get involved more in enterprise business. Greater application of 5G will be primarily for the enterprise. And as 5G permeates into enterprise, rules of business will change. Therefore, different types of employment will get generated. Different type of business models will come in and this in turn will impact the consumer.

In the initial period, wherever 5G rolls out, there will be people embracing it. They will get better speeds, lower latencies. But the benefits of 5G will come through once the enterprise starts adopting 5G.

Airtel and Jio are running away with 5G rollout and coverage. Do you see other operators giving these telcos competition?

There is potential for everybody, whether existing or new. But there should be a business case and it has to be then assessed by the strategic teams of the operators. You named two operators who are going full steam ahead with 5G. That is because they can see a business case. If they did not, they would go slow too. I don't see any reason why a third operator will not see business case in 5G. Segmentation will happen as it happens in all types of businesses. Wherever they have strengths, they will look to monetise and invest in 5G. 

How much time will it take for 5G deployment to happen in the rural areas? 

Taking 5G to the rural areas depends on networkisation, which depends on fiberisation and towerisation. To predict as to when it will happen is difficult. A lot of work is happening towards networkisation. It is evident even when you look at the current Draft Telecom Bill. It places a lot of emphasis on RoW, which has been a major impediment for fiberisation and towerisation. Now, it is being met head on by the government and the operators are definitely shoulder-to-shoulder with the government to roll out the networks to rural areas. 

Wherever there is industrialisation in the rural areas, 5G will definitely be a use case. And that is where non-standalone (NSA) 5G will start coming up on the existing 4G networks. But for the consumer to get standalone 5G networks in rural areas at this point of time would mean they will have to pay a little more for a 5G handset and maybe for the 5G subscription. But the benefits they accrue from 5G is for the consumer segment to decide if there is demand in a particular rural area. In the long-term, 5G is going to go to every nook and corner of India and every citizen will definitely enjoy the benefits of 5G.

What will be the role of 4G moving forward? Do you think that it is going to sustain itself for a very long time, or is it only till 5G is completely rolled out?

This is an interesting question and I'll draw an analogy. If you see any segment which uses technology majorly, a simple analysis will show you that there are three types of technologies which always coexist. One is obsolescent, which is just going out. Second is the current technology and third one is the new technology. The percentages are generally known to be about 30 per cent each for obsolescent and new technologies. The balance of 40 per cent will be for the current technology. As new technology comes in, this graph shifts because it takes a lot of investment and it takes a lot of mindset change to adopt that technology. This shift cannot be overnight. So, even if we manage to roll out 5G all over the country, it will still take time to be adopted. 

I do see that 4G and 5G will continue together for some time. This market will sustain itself for some time. Then 5G will slowly start taking up all of this segment. And by the time that happens, possibly, 6G will be upon us. Then, we will have the same question on whether 5G is going to stay and if it is going to cover the entire country. 

How have your interactions been with the government?

The industry is very happy to engage with the government because we see outcomes coming up in smaller timeframes. Our interactions with government are no longer academic. It is a joint effort. And this is something that our telecom minister has also brought up. But our talks are very intense and straightforward much like peer-to-peer interactions. Then, of course, government takes its own decisions because they have various stakeholders. 

There is a lot of focus on implementation now because the reforms have come. Therefore, the industry is also gung-ho about implementation based on those reforms. Government also wants to see that things go as per the speed they anticipate. So, it is a joint effort between the government and industry going ahead to achieve whatever we can for the betterment of telecom in India.