Ericsson says operators need to highlight where 5G gives users higher capacity

When 5G networks were rolled out in India last year, wireless carriers, vendors, and handset makers promised 5G as the solution that would enable use cases such as self-driving cars or doctors performing surgery remotely. “The use cases that we have put forward are very segmented in nature,” Sethi told indianexpress.com in an interview. “We don’t believe that there will be one single use case that will have mass market appeal,” he clarified, adding that telecom operators need to “build segmented use cases.”

Swedish telecom gear maker Ericsson expects over 31 million users to upgrade to 5G smartphones in 2023 in India, a big number considering the phone market is going through a rough phase across the globe due to higher prices of newer devices and a longer upgrade cycle. In a survey done by Ericsson Consumer Lab, half of consumers are looking to pay less than Rs 20,000 for a 5G smartphone.

The 5G buzz has helped handset makers who have sold 5G smartphones on the promise of how the new generation technology would make your phones faster and better. “The handset makers have benefited from the rollout of 5G, but the fact is that there’s been weak smartphone demand so far,” admits Sethi. “While you are seeing 5G rollouts happening, you are not seeing the sort of demand that you would have expected, but hopefully that will change as we are going into the festive season.”

In India, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel both offer 5G services, while the third big player – Vodafone Idea (Vi) — is yet to roll out networks in the country. Both Jio and Airtel claim to have 50 million 5G customers each within a year of the launch of 5G services on their networks. However, the growing challenge in front of operators is to monetise their 5G networks. Both Jio and Airtel are not charging extra for 5G services, which can be a tricky solution in the long term.

“We don’t know what is going to be the timeline,” Sethi responded when asked when Indian operators will start charging more for 5G services. “At some given point in time, we have to think about monetisation,” he said, adding “we are in a phase where we are doing build-out right now, and once that build-out phase is over, the needle moves into monetisation, and then we might start seeing specific 5G plans.”