On Friday, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) published a consultation paper asking the industry for input on the policy barriers preventing enterprises from adopting 5G-driven technology more quickly. Written submissions are accepted until October 30. On November 13, counter-comments are requested.
The goal of the paper is to increase the uptake of technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality (XR), and the internet of things (IoT), which are essential for enabling automation in businesses.
According to the paper, which Mint obtained, embracing new technologies in the workplace “will require effective ecosystem collaboration between telecom service providers, original equipment manufacturers, infrastructure providers, and the government to increase consumer adoption and market readiness – to unlock large-scale benefits of 5G.”
Additionally, it pointed out the necessity for infrastructure upgrades to fulfill 5G connection requirements, “fiberization” of networks to deploy 5G among corporations, and network density to support enterprise adoption of new technologies.
In India, the deployment of 5G via captive networks for businesses encountered a problem due to disputes between telecoms and important businesses for access to the 5G spectrum. While businesses pushed for the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to directly allocate 5G spectrum, citing increased deployment flexibility and privacy, telecom operators lobbied against the move, claiming that such allocation and deployments would be costly, ineffective, and ultimately result in operational burdens.
On May 26, the DoT announced a decision that favored telcos and rejected giving businesses direct access to 5G spectrum.
However, it seems that telcos’ efforts to stand for preferential pricing of spectrum allocation for over-the-top (OTT) streaming and communication services have been ineffective. Government officials have so far maintained that no preferential pricing of the 5G network is being considered at this time – in order to preserve net neutrality—despite the fact that companies like Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, and Vodafone-Idea wrote to Trai highlighting the “disproportionate” infrastructure costs incurred by telcos due to heavy data usage by services like Netflix and WhatsApp.
Along with a general decline in global tech spending by businesses, the deployment of 5G infrastructure across Indian organizations has gradually slowed down among India’s large-cap information technology (IT) service providers.
Due to macroeconomic concerns and a weak overall prediction for expenditure viability for the remainder of the year, the slowdown in 5G spending was mostly seen in North America.
