Andrew Bonwick
Vice President of Product Development at Relm Insurance
Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Stephen Rose
CEO Render Networks


5G networks have launched in India. Telecom operators Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel have been rolling out 5G at a rapid pace. Already millions of customers in India have experienced 5G. But one thing that has been common amongst all these consumers is that all of them mostly used 5G for speed tests. This is primarily because there are no real use cases of 5G for consumers. The 5G SA device ecosystem is also yet to reach a point where the telecom operators can start getting a return on their investments for 5G.
At the moment, the consumers are mostly going to stick with 4G as using 5G would be slightly more expensive because 5G consumes data at a faster speed. In addition, 5G phones are quite expensive because of supply chain issues across the world. For 5G to be a real success in India, the device ecosystem would have to expand to a point where there are several devices under Rs 15000 which support 5G.
Also Read: Know the Differences Between 4G and 5G
But the consumers are likely not going to rush to upgrade to 5G phones because there’s no real advantage of doing so. 5G is only good for speed tests and that would remain the case until the time cloud gaming and other use cases of 5G which directly impact the lives of the consumers become common.
At this point, consumers “want” 5G, they don’t need it. Whereas most consumers need 4G to get through their daily lives. People take a little time to change their habits and once 5G is readily available everywhere in the country, it might start changing the behavior of the users into using 5G more than 4G. Still, the question of whether it is a need or want would be there for the next few years. If users get decent 4G networks, they can do everything they do on their smartphones in India.