It has been two years since 5G was first launched in India. The historic day of October 1, 2022, will always be remembered for the arrival of 5G in the country. So what has changed in these two years for India? Here, we won't focus on how India has progressed economically in these two years, instead, we will look at how the mobile download speeds have improved. India used to rank 119th in September 2022 in the global speedtest rankings of Ookla.
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But in August 2024, India ranked 20th in the very same list. In fact, in April 2024, India was at the 15th rank. So 5G speeds have definitely put India on the global map for high-speed broadband access on the go. Not only that, but the arrival of 5G has also enabled the rollout of 5G FWA (Fixed Wireless Access) services. FWA is great for areas where fixed-line broadband can't be provided due to fiber deployment issues.
However, speed can't be the only thing that India got from 5G. So What else? This is the major question. The answer to it is pretty simple, not much. Use cases for 5G are still pretty much limited and in hindsight, you can't blame the telcos for that. For use cases to emerge, the entire tech ecosystem has to develop.
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For now, the only major use case of 5G in India is 5G FWA. Reliance Jio has already reached almost every part of the country with 5G and then its FWA services. Bharti Airtel is on the side of a little slower rollout. More than 130 million users have connected to Jio's 5G network while for Airtel the number is more than 90 million. It will be interesting to notice what will happen in the third year of 5G in India.
