Everyone’s waiting for the arrival of 5G in India. The only operators which are expected to launch the 5G networks in the coming months are Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel. Both of them along with Vodafone Idea have already started testing 5G network solutions in different parts of India. But initially, the 5G networks won’t be focused on the consumers, instead, the telcos will keep their focus on enterprise customers. It is true that 5G speeds won’t be required by customers in general for a lot of things. A good capacity and a strong 4G+ network in India would suffice for the users in India. As for the use cases of 5G, it is evident that it would be used majorly for the Internet-of-Things (IoT) products and many other things by businesses/enterprises.
Need of Solid Budget 5G Smartphones for Consumer Business
One of the primary reasons why the operators won’t focus too much on the consumer business with the 5G networks is the lack of solid budget 5G smartphones in the Indian market. Either the customers need to purchase high-end flagships or they have to settle for an underperforming budget 5G smartphone.
Further, only a handful number of users own 5G smartphones in India. This number is expected to increase with time as more and more good entry-level 5G smartphones are available. Thus, the operators would stick with 4G when it comes to retail consumers and focus on the enterprise customers to deliver 5G services.
According to an ET Telecom report, Deloitte, one of the major analyst companies in India said that operators will earn most of their 5G revenues from the enterprise customers initially and the retail revenues would only grow once the mass adoption of 5G smartphones is completed. This will take at least 2 years from today as more and more people will be shifting to 5G phones in the time frame.
