NEW DELHI: The fifth-generation or 5G technology will have better prospects in India following the activity around the development of relevant use cases, and enabling policy environment, a top regulatory official said.

“I am thrilled to share that a large number of India-specific applications are also being developed now, and I am quite optimistic that 5G will have much better future in India than anywhere else,” Sunil K Gupta, Secretary, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) at ETTelecom Webinar said.

Indian service providers and technology vendors were facing challenges to develop locally-relevant use cases which according to experts emerged as a deterrent for India to embrace next-generation technology.

The global 5G use cases may not happen in India, cautioned Gupta.

“As far as initiatives taken by Trai are concerned, we have given recommendations for spectrum pricing which is under consideration of the government. We have also recommended testbeds and many of them have been created,” the official said.

The ecosystem in India, according to him, is getting developed including telecom service providers and other stakeholders who are testing different applications.

Back in 2017, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) formed a high-level 5G Forum to bring out a roadmap for the newer generation of services. The committee headed by Prof AJ Pulraj has recommended additional spectrum bands and facilitating enabling policy regime.

“My sense is that implementation of 5G in India is going to be in certain areas which will have higher requirements and then spread subsequently, and it has a role in industrial development and smart cities and other use cases,” Gupta added.

Telecom carriers reeling under a debt of nearly Rs 8 lakh crore, are also finding the base price of 5G airwaves in the 3300-3600 Mhz band as too high, and asked DoT to reconsider it.

“Levies, taxes and spectrum cost is something that we have already talked in the National Digital Communications Policy (NDCP) 2018,” P Balaji, the chief regulatory officer at Vodafone Idea said, and added that if costs come down, then the affordable services would go down to consumers.Balaji added that the bottlenecks in Right of Way (RoW) and fiberisation should also be addressed.

TV Ramachandran, president at the Broadband India Forum (BIF) said that for a better broadband penetration public Wi-Fi would play a critical role, and the sector regulator has already come out with its recommendations.

“The world’s average of pubic Wi-Fi is 200 fold than that in India, and satellite communications are not yet tapped,” he said.

Ramachandran further said that India has less than a lakh satellite-based communication subscribers as compared to nearly 40 lakh in the United States.

Being enabling infrastructure provider to other sectors, companies should unify and take a consensus approach, and that would affect in decision making,” Umang Das, Chairman, Foreign Investors India Forum said.

“5G will benefit everybody, and help in economic value creation. Steps should be taken in this direction, and intervention is required to enable infrastructure,” Amit Marwah, head of marketing at Nokia said.

Tilak Raj Dua, Director General, Tower and Infrastructure Providers Association (Taipa) said that the regulator has rightly recommended enhancing the scope of infrastructure providers and that needed to be implemented.

“The creation of the National Fibre Authority is important and that will facilitate the new technologies,” Dua added.

The national policy released in September 2018, also talked about setting up a dedicated agency to accelerate fibre deployment and monitoring in the country in the wake of next-generation technologies.