The Indian telecom market is a place of ruthless competition. In the last decade, multiple telecom companies serving directly to consumers went out of business because they couldn’t sustain the evolving market in India. Only three private telecom operators remain, and out of the three, only two are in a stable condition.
5G is the next step for India and the telecom industry in the country. But 5G is not going to be the same as previous-generation networks. It will involve a lot of new elements, and the arrival of 5G will change the market forever.
While competing to stay on top is a natural tendency of the companies, with 5G, things need to change a little. The perspective of the industry should be towards making 5G successful in the country to ensure that the economy benefits from it.
This will only happen if the telecom operators start working together. To start with, the telcos need to start sharing core infra with each other.
DoT Had Allowed Infrastructure Sharing
In 2021, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) allowed the telecom operators to share active infrastructure with each other. This included the core elements as well. The move was aimed at helping telcos to come out with new services faster and with lesser cost on the deployment of the network and its infrastructure.
Sharing can benefit both the original owner of the infrastructure and the party renting it. This will be very crucial for the rollout of 5G networks in India. The need for dense infrastructure is there for 5G, and the telcos will have to spend lakhs of crores if they want to deliver PAN India 5G coverage.
Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman of Bharti Enterprises, has said many times that the industry needs to work together ahead. The low average revenue per user (ARPU) figure of the industry exists right now because each of the telcos is trying to undercut the other in some way or some area.
While this is slightly going away with tariff hikes kicking in, the telcos also need to work together in other areas. There will be a ton of new technologies coming into the market very soon. The digital era is already at its peak, and with 5G, things will become even more intense.
To reach new areas fast and capitalise on the investments to get a good return on investment (RoI), the telcos will have to share infra with each other. The government has also allowed telecom players to access satellite broadband for backend support.
