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The executives also highlighted low average revenue per user (ARPUs) and right-of-way (RoW) as some of the immediate pressing challenges that may affect the progress of 5G roll outs.
“Definitely there is no killer use cases in India right now even though societies like Korea have got gaming which is driving the 5G uptake,” said Rahul Vatts<\/a>, chief regulatory officer, Bharti Airtel, in a panel discussion at ETTelecom’s World Telecommunications Day 2023<\/a> event.
“I think 5G is going to be a great leveler as far as our country is concerned, and we are going to really catch up with the industrialised nations such as in APAC. I already see a lot of use cases coming up globally,” Vatts said.
He said Airtel has demonstrated several 5G use cases, mentioning the trial of private 5G network at the Bosch factory in Bengaluru and a captive private 5G network deployment at Mahindra’s Chakan facility jointly with Tech Mahindra.
“Nowhere in the world do we have use cases exclusively for 5G except in the area of gaming. Others are all 4G use cases that have been implanted on 5G and doing a little more efficient work,” said SP Kochhar, director general, Cellular Operators Association of India<\/a> (COAI).
“Exclusive use cases of 5G are yet to be discovered, which can be called as killer apps. That will take time. I think those cases will emerge from India and the world will adopt them because of our flexibility of approach and the aggressiveness that operators display,” Kochhar added.
Vatts cited industry predictions and said that India’s telecom industry will require a capex of $1.5 trillion in the next seven years for 5G, 5G Advanced, and sixth-generation or 6G technology , but emphasised on some challenges such as the “very abysmal” ARPU of $2.5 (~Rs 206), and said that the prices of 5G handsets have to be affordable to drive the adoption of the fifth generation technology.
“It's not just about the ARPU. Even if you look at the return on capital investment, and what we have deployed, it's still quite low. To be able to sustain investment, you require things to become easier. So that's going to be one big challenge, how do we ensure the sustainability of the industry to continue to invest more and more as we go into 5G and 5G Advanced,” he added.