Telecom minister Manoj Sinha has said India is gearing up for introducing 5G and could well lead global subscriptions to the next generation technology along with North America by 2022.
At an industry event on Friday, Sinha said the government’s next telecom policy will take into account future trends when data will drive the industry more than voice, given the surge in use of broadband amid growing penetration of smartphones.
Sinha said that we need to think of and prepare for an ecosystem where Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) are mainstream, and connectivity is seamless, designed to improve the quality of e-governance and education, as well as to enable financial inclusion, smart cities, and an intelligent transportation system, amongst other things.
5G will speed up the digital transformation in a number of industries, enabling new use cases in areas such as IoT, automation, transport and big data, he added.
The government has already started work to introduce 5G technology in India. The telecom department recently asked the sector regulator to suggest the starting price for 5G airwaves in the 3400 MHz to 3600 MHz bands, which could make their debut in the next auctions.
According to a study by ICRIER and Broadband India Forum released on Friday, an increase of 17 per cent in internet traffic in India had contributed to an increase of Rs 7 lakh crore in GDP of the country, thereby contributing 5.6 per cent to India’s GDP in FY16.
By 2020, this contribution is expected to grow to 16 per cent, or Rs 36 lakh crore, half of which will be driven by mobile applications, the study said. It suggested that a 10 per cent increase in global internet traffic delivers on average a 1.3 per cent increase in global GDP.
An increase of 10 per cent in the global mobile internet traffic would lead to 0.7 per cent increase in global GDP. Apps contributed a minimum of Rs 1,35,760 crore in 2015-16 to India’s GDP.
By Baishakhi Dutta
