Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 1 inaugurated the India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2022 exhibition ahead of the formal launch of 5G mobile services in India.

After inaugurating the exhibition at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi, he visited pavilions set up by different telecom operators and technology providers to get a first hand experience of what 5G can do.

He started with Reliance Jio’s stalls, where he witnessed the ‘True 5G’ devices displayed and experienced the use case through Jio Glass.

Flanked by Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and billionaires Mukesh Ambani of Reliance, Sunil Bharti Mittal of Bharti Airtel and Kumar Mangalam Birla of Vodafone Idea, he spent time understanding the indigenous development of end-to-end 5G technology.

Former Telecom Secretary R Chandrasekhar said that 5G is more for “education, entertainment and gaming.” Nobody will upgrade to 5G just to talk to their friends on the phone.”

Chandrasekhar added, “I think this is a big day for Indian telecom, because mobile 5g is something that we have all been waiting for. There are lots and lots of interesting use cases in manufacturing, in education, in healthcare, in autonomous vehicles, and so on.

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“The big question is, how soon are they going to be prevalent and ubiquitous? And how soon are they going to actually make a significant impact on the revenues for telecom companies?

Obviously, this means that the investment and the rollout of the infrastructure and the launch of the services has to be in place. So the question is, where is that killer app? I think I heard you saying a little earlier that that was the big question. So I think there are two questions. Where is the killer app? And what is the timeline in which all of these things are going to happen on a significant scale, not just as demo pieces?”

The former telecom secretary stated, “I think that from an India perspective, as it has been for 4g, and 3g, entertainment is going to be a big factor. And even things like gaming could be important. Education is another area. And these are the three big ticket items that I would bet on, on being fast forwarded once 5g is actually available.”

“I think the question is, how quickly the content business will catch up and create content, which is specifically designed for making use of the enormous power, low latency, high bandwidth that 5g provides, and how soon the kind of end equipment that is required to enable large number of users to benefit from it, and how these price points can be brought within the level of affordability of the majority of the Indian population. So I think these are big questions.”

He continued, “But there is one very important thing which I thought I should point out, which is that, apart from all the positive features of spectrum auctions that were mentioned, both by the by the three companies and by many of the panelists, what the structure of the payment has done is that since it is not paid upfront, but it is actually paid in equal installments over 20 years, the interests of the telecom companies and the country and the government, of course, have all been aligned, because it is now in their interest to ensure a faster rollout. And some of the operators like Reliance, for example, are also in the content business.

“So they will probably have recognized this opportunity even earlier. So what we are going to witness is probably a convergence of the entertainment industry and the telecom industry going forward, in which India probably is an unbeatable opportunity, and could well be a leader globally. So I don’t want to repeat all the other points which the panelists said – all of which are, I believe, entirely true – but I thought these are some additional aspects, which we need to keep in mind.”

(With inputs from agencies)