Consumer adoption of 5G to take time to reach significant numbers: Gartner analyst Pulkit Pandey

5G or the fifth generation of wireless Long Term Evolution (LTE), is a new international wireless standard following 1G, 2G, 3G, and 4G networks. Designed for devices including smartphones, laptops and tablets, 5G empowers an up-to-the-minute network created to connect practically everyone and everything together, including machines, objects, and gadgets.

Mostly everyone uses 4G these days. You might have been amazed at how quickly one could download files or stream content when 4G was initially introduced in the market.

The quicker the better is the common belief and that's why you ought to adore 5G. It is anticipated to offer speeds ranging up to 10 Gbps (Gigabits per second), which is around 40 times faster than the average 4G speed.

5G spectrum auctions are underway for almost a week now, Telecom Minister expects the spectrum allocation to be completed by August end and the 5G roll-out to begin by the end of this year. With 5G roll-out on the anvil, Gartner analyst Pulkit Pandey spoke with VoicenData and provided his insights and analysis, around the 5G auction.

Here are the excerpts from the interaction:

V&D: Adani Group seems to be gunning for a slow entry through the private network lane. Is this an indication towards becoming a significant player in the market overtime?

Pulkit Pandey: Adani Group has entered the market to gain an early-movers’ advantage in the private networks. As per their press release, they are focusing on sectors such as airports, ports, power generation plants, and manufacturing industries. Adani Group has several ports and airports for operations, management and development under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP). These private networks will act as an enabler for them to automate several use cases in these industries. Adani Group can try to use the potential success stories from these cases to further expand in the private network space.

V&D: Most of the telcos are still paying the debt of the last spectrum auction and haven’t been able to fully monetize 4G, with the kind of investment and capital expenditure needed for 5G, in your view is it viable for them to incur that amount of CAPEX?

Pulkit Pandey: While 5G is CAPEX intensive, the CSPs are initially going to focus on Non-standalone 5G, where they can leverage their existing 4G LTE investments and reduce capital costs to a certain extent. However, standalone 5G is going to be capital intensive and CSPs will need to increase their CAPEX significantly.

V&D: The auctions will pave the way for 5G roll-out in India, what are your views on the ample amount of spectrum available at hand for auction with just two major bidders?

Pulkit Pandey: The Mid Band/C-Band (3300 MHz) and High Band/mmWave Band (26 GHz) are expected and should witness aggressive participation by the CSPs by virtue of their speed capabilities. There is an ample amount of spectrum available in this auction round, especially the low band.

V&D: With 5G services rollout on the anvil, A general view on kind of opportunities and hurdles/threats that come with it.

Pulkit Pandey: As we see from the other geographies, the consumer adoption of 5G is going to take some time to reach significant numbers. Thus initially the CSPs are expected to take a balanced approach between consumer and enterprise market opportunities.

V&D: Both telcos and tech cos will look to skill and upskill their workforce, with both targeting the same talent pool, do you feel that is another battle for telcos and tech cos after sparring over the control of 5G for captive private network?

Pulkit Pandey: The captive private networks are still a step away from adoption as the auction and guidelines for these networks are still not finalized. Thus, Indian CSPs will still retain early-movers’ advantage in the Captive networks because the spectrum allotment for Captive networks will still take time.

V&D: With heavy dependence on China or the West in terms of technology , in your view what plans should DoT be looking at in relation with the security threats that might cause?

Pulkit Pandey:  In terms of capabilities, we have several Indian player representation in the OSS, BSS and network infrastructure space. Most of the technology adoption is seeing an ecosystem approach, where network security is a very important aspect. We have seen that several countries have banned a few specific geography-based vendors. Thus it is very important to maintain a secure network, which is usually an ecosystem play.