PM's Vision Completely Apt, 5G A Means To An End: Jaideep Redkar, Prose Technologies

While talking about the newly launched 5G services in India, Jaideep Redkar, President of Prose Technologies in an interview with BW Businessworld said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision for finding more real-world applications for this milestone technology is completely apt. Edited excerpts:

What is your opinion on the Prime Minister’s plea to the industry leaders to find more real-world applications of 5G technology? 

I think the vision of the Prime Minister is completely apt because it shouldn't be seen as just high-speed internet, it should be seen as a means to the end rather than a means itself. There are many applications of 5G use cases in terms of real-life requirements like education, agriculture and medicine, which will allow us to get the benefit of faster delivery of services to our fellow citizens. That will only be possible if you look at it in a more holistic way rather than just as a means of communication. 

What role will Prose play in the 5G playing field not that the service is officially launched? 

Products and solutions which are currently 5G compliant and 5G ready, that’s how. So, till the time 5G use cases evolve, we will be able to come up with products and services which are 5G compliant. So, the products and services which we are supplying at this point in time will be 5G compliant. Let’s take our base station antennas, for example. We have a hybrid antenna model. So today, what is getting deployed for 4G can be used with 5g instead of having a separate 5G antenna, which is what you will need for capturing the signal on your mobile phones. 

In a practical scenario, how do you see 5G rolling out happening in India?

The biggest problem with 5G will be backhaul capacity. You know, because there's a lot of up take on the radio access network. Fibre is not complete. Microwave is going to be the big challenge that we will have to use and in the absence of adequate fibre in the infrastructure to be able to complement the services that 5G will be offering to the country. 

So that's the big challenge that we have as far as 5G is concerned. However, having said that, the infrastructure problems that we are facing will get substituted or will get addressed when we have 5G Because the delivery of services will happen more digitally. 

The pandemic already made that people moved from physical transactions to digital transactions. So, India is getting ready in that sense. And 5G, once the used cases have evolved, will allow us to move to a digital economy much more effectively than what is currently happening in the physical world.