Chennai: The Indian telecommunication sector has been reeling under stress for over two years since the roll-out of Reliance Jio. With telcos like Vodafone and Idea joining together to fight increasing threat, leading players like Bharti Airtel are looking at ways to increase their average revenue per user (ARPU).
Regardless, Swedish telecom equipment-maker Ericsson has called for faster and early switchover to the costly but highly critical 5G, terming it as the future of mobile communication.
The statement from the firm comes despite the lingering financial woes that domestic telcos are faced with.
Ericsson’s views come at a time when India, despite being the world’s fastest growing mobile market with over 1.2 billion customers, is yet to move onto the latest 5G spectrum as they are struggling with high debt and falling revenue due to intense competition.
Revenue decline has left the operators with even not enough money to service their mostly 3G and partly 4G infrastructure leading to poor data and voice quality.
Analysts of the domestic telecom industry are still divided over when can a revival happen, after Jio’s onslaught.
A senior official from Ericsson acknowledged that the lowest ARPU generated by the domestic telcos is the “real challenge”.
“It is more a matter of survival for our customers to move into 5G,” head of network applications and cloud infrastructure for Southeast Asia, Oceania and India, Ludvig Landgren has said.
He said the need to switch over to 5G is because of the financial benefits the newest generation of communication offers. ‘The cost per gigabyte data use for a telco will be much lower with 5G,’ he said, pointing out that Indians are one of biggest consumers of data in the world at present.
Landgren claimed that costs will be 10 times cheaper per GB of data usage and that his company is coming out with offerings such that only software upgrades to existing infrastructure will be required for companies to transition.
It can be noted that India is yet to sell its 5G spectrum and there is a point of view which calls for deferring the same due to the financial difficulties the operators are facing, wherein they recover the cost on previous generations well before transitioning to the new ages.
| ‘They will leave’ |
| Ericsson, citing a survey has claimed that a third of Indian consumers will leave their operator “immediately” if competition starts providing 5G. However, customers are not going to abandon shup at once, said officials of the firm, claiming that another third will wait for six months before migrating. Ericsson has also noted that mobile broadband will be the primary driver for 5G adoption in the country. |
| Enemy of my enemy… |
| Ericsson has signed country’s largest operator Vodafone Idea as a client to deploy cloud packet core to enhance its network performance. Landgren said this is significant because it used to work with the erstwhile Idea Cellular but not with Vodafone. Further, the firm has stated that it has demonstrated its abilities to the Mukesh Ambani-led company, hinting that it is ready to work with Jio. |