The telecom industry will need at least Rs 1.5-2.5 lakh crore investment in the next two-three years towards infrastructure development to facilitate meaningful roll out of 5G services given that India\u2019s fiber layout is much below the required levels.
\u201cThe low level of fiberisation at present will necessitate network capex of Rs 1.5-2.5 lakh crore in the next 2-3 years. However, with fiberisation at 35.11% in India as of June 2022, more than 3 lakh km has to be covered at the pan-India level between fiscal 2023 and 2025,\u201d according to a report by Crisil Research.
The 5G network infrastructure will need to support up to 10 times more bandwidth than what 4G infrastructure currently supports, said experts. In India, currently only 35% of total towers are fiberised \u2013 or connected through optic fiber – against an ideal requirement of 70% for the launch of 5G services. Besides, investments in network densification through provisioning of fiber, small cells and active infrastructure sharing are the other initiatives which need to be taken at the earliest, say industry experts.
Amid a race between Mukesh Ambani\u2019s Reliance Jio and Sunil Bharti Mittal\u2019s Airtel for 5G supremacy, Gautam Adani\u2019s foray into India\u2019s telecom sector has raised a lot of eyebrows. What does it mean for the consumer and commercial sectors? Kalyan Parbat of The Economic Times explains
Compared to India, South Korea has fiberized 65-70% of its sites, while in the US, Japan and China, the level of fiberisation is 80-90%, according to information by Digital Infrastructure Providers Association (DIPA).
\u201cThe government should consider enhancing the scope of infrastructure providers (IPs-1) registration by permitting them to share active infrastructure as enshrined in NDCP-2018 which will ensure roll-out of 5G services at a faster pace,\u201d says TR Dua, Director General, DIPA.
A major reason for the slow pace of fiberisation is the right of way (RoW) cost, which ranges from several lakh to a few crore across circles.
While the central government has taken efforts to maintain a uniform RoW cost across circles, the high disparity has been a huge roadblock to reaching the fiberisation target, Crisil report said.
\u201c5G requires huge infrastructure and investment from the service provider. We are still at the beginning stage of implementation. However, despite the cumbersome nature of rollout, excitement about 5G has picked up well and we are taking steps in the right direction,\u201d KG Purushothaman, partner and telecom sector leader at KPMG in India, said.
According to a study, network deployment investment is reduced by laying optic fiber cable along railway lines, power transmission grids and pipelines. Estimates suggest that sharing antenna sites can save operators up to 40% on both capital expenditure and 5G deployment, Dua said.
The 5G handset penetration also remains low in India at 15-20%. The shortage in semiconductor chips has resulted in an increase in price of 5G handsets which could limit robust penetration this fiscal, industry executives said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The telecom industry will need at least Rs 1.5-2.5 lakh crore investment in the next two-three years towards infrastructure development to facilitate meaningful roll out of 5G services given that India\u2019s fiber layout is much below the required levels.\u201cThe low level of fiberisation at present will necessitate network capex of Rs 1.5-2.5 lakh crore in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":288985,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[667],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-288938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}