COAI DG Reports India’s 5G Rollout is Fastest in the World, But Revenues Have Not Increased
According to a senior official from the telecom industry body COAI, although the rollout of the 5G network in India has been the quickest globally, the revenue has not increased due to the fact that the apps responsible for 80 percent of the network traffic are not contributing financially.
Speaking to PTI at the India Mobile Congress, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) CEO S P Kochhar said telecom operators do not want to burden consumers, but someone has to bear the cost of network investment.
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“The rollout of 5G has been very good. It has set world records for the fastest 5G rollout. But having said that, I am somewhat limited in saying that the telecom revenue has not grown,” Kochhar said.
He said that there is a huge amount of capital investment in deploying these networks.
“Private players who implement this definitely expect a profit from it. Unfortunately, this is not happening on the scale that it should. The introduction of 5G has brought in 4-5 large entities that consume 80 percent of the bandwidth of telecommunication networks, but do not pay revenue”, Kochhar said.
Internet companies and their lobby groups have said that if the telecom players’ proposal is accepted, it will adversely affect startup ecosystems in India and stifle innovation.
Kocchar said such claims are misleading.
“There are only 4-5 large traffic generators (LTGs) making huge profits. The start-up ecosystem consumes only about 1.8 percent of the total traffic, which is very small. We want SMEs to be exempted from this proposal, but those, that consume 80 percent of the bandwidth should pay to support the infrastructure,” Kochhar said.
He said that if there is no telecommunications network, start-ups will suffer.
“We want the government to accept our proposal in principle and then both parties will sit down and sort out the other formalities between themselves,” Kochhar said.
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