Opinion: BSNL Is Not Wrong About Investing on 4G

For a long-time now, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has been trying to proceed with its 4G roll out operations in India. But one after another, problems and hurdles keep arising for the state-run telecom operator. BSNL has been in a grave situation for the last few years and is still running because of the grace of the government’s revival package.

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The Himachal Pradesh (HP) High Court (HC) recently called out BSNL for wasting the taxpayers’ money. The court said that while the whole world is looking to roll out 5G networks, BSNL is still stuck in using people’s money for rolling out 4G. While the court’s comments come in concern of keeping taxpayers’ money safe, BSNL can still do wonders with 4G.

BSNL’s 4G Will be Important for Indian Telecom

Just because companies and the world is moving towards 5G, it doesn’t mean that 4G will be rendered useless as soon as a single 5G network is introduced. Both the technologies have a multitude of differences in terms of performance; hence their use cases are completely different.

While there’s no doubt that the future of connectivity is 5G only, 4G still has a major role to play, at least in India. 5G is still at least 3 to 4 years away or even longer to reach PAN-India coverage. Further, the 5G plans are expected to be significantly more expensive than the 4G plans on offer today.

A lot of average consumers who are happy with 4G networks and their speeds won’t want to pay more for 5G plans regardless of how much extra speed they get. On top of this, India hasn’t even seen true 4G yet.