Enormous expansion anticipated in India's 5G environment

The enormous expansion anticipated in India's 5G environment has been made clear by a recent research from TeamLease Services titled "India's 5G rollout: Revolutionizing the People Supply Chain."

With 1.17 billion users, India is currently the second-largest telecom market in the world. The report predicts that by the end of 2028, it is predicted that India would have 0.6 billion 5G users, boosting the country's mobile subscription coverage, which is projected to increase from 77% in 2022 to 94% in 2028. The nation's digital transformation will be facilitated by the 5G network's promise of super-high speed and ultra-low latency, which will also result in the creation of numerous jobs both inside and outside the telecom sector. The introduction of 5G in the nation will obliterate physical distances and make it easier to connect people with possibilities for work and skills without regard to their actual location.

By 2035, the report stated that 5G is predicted to produce $13.2 trillion in global economic value and 22.3 million jobs throughout the 5G global value chain. Individuals, MSMEs, and corporate goliaths are all anticipated to gain from 5G technology. A large increase in employment in the sectors of agriculture, construction, utilities, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, and educational services will result from its ability to democratise access to knowledge and information.

According to another report by CRISIL, the telecom sector will need to invest between INR 1.5 and 2.5 trillion over the course of the next three years in infrastructure development to enable the seamless rollout of 5G services.

Through the PLI programme, INR 120 billion is already scheduled to enter the telecom industry, with around 25% of that amount going towards the creation of new jobs, providing the impetus required for a bigger number of employment prospects.

The report further highlights that , the IT, banking, and financial services industries would be among the top benefactors. Other industries that would be heavily influenced by 5G include BFSI (60%) retail and e-commerce (46%), education (48%), gaming (48%) and 48% of the education sector.

According to the answers to Team Lease's poll, data scientists, cybersecurity professionals, and cloud infrastructure engineers are the most in-demand 5G abilities. The report further added that young technical grads have a golden opportunity because over 97% of firms said they will pay more to hire competent freshers for 5G-related roles.

Even though 5G comes with plethora of opportunities, every new technology that is introduced also expands the demand-supply of skilled workforce in the industry. In order to close the upcoming demand-supply gap in the telecom business, a significant majority of 88% of companies believe that reskilling and upskilling current personnel is the best course of action.

One of the report's primary conclusions highlights how India must develop a skilled workforce of at least eight million people by 2025 in order to fully realise the transformative potential of 5G technology. It is crucial to provide the workforce with the knowledge and abilities needed to understand the complexities of this cutting-edge network infrastructure as 5G subscriber numbers increase exponentially.

This year saw the 50 million mark in 5G users nationwide, a remarkable breakthrough six months after the introduction of 5G services in India. This indicates that by December 31, 2022, 4.37% of the nation’s total telecom customers were 5G subscribers, according to TRAI data. It is projected to comprise about 6.5% of the 773 million 4G subscribers worldwide. If viewed worldwide, India presently accounts for 5% of the 1 billion 5G users worldwide as of the end of 2022.