PM Modi launches 5G services in India today

1st of October, 2022 will go down in history as a significant day for the 21st century India as Prime Minister Narendra Modi launches the 5G telephony services in India. The service has been launched by the Prime Minister in select cities on Saturday and it will progressively cover the entire country over the next couple of years.

The 5G services were launched at 10 am on Saturday at an event organised at Pragati Maidan in the national capital. Flanked by Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and billionaires Mukesh Ambani of Reliance, Sunil Bharti Mittal of Bharti Airtel and Kumar Mangalam Birla of Vodafone Idea, the PM after launching the services spent time understanding the indigenous development of end-to-end 5G technology.

The three major telecom operators of the country present at the launch event demonstrated each use case in front of the Prime Minister to show the potential of 5G technology in India. Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) Chairman Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio connected a teacher from a school in Mumbai with students in three different locations in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Odisha.

In the Airtel demo, a girl from Uttar Pradesh witnessed a lively and immersive education experience to learn about the solar system with the help of virtual reality and augmented reality.

The Vodafone Idea test case demonstrated the safety of workers in an under-construction tunnel of Delhi Metro through the creation of a ‘digital twin’ of the tunnel on the dias. Vi in partnership with Athonet and Tata Communication Transformation Services (TCTS), created the digital twin of the under-construction Delhi Metro site in Dwarka region. The digital images were ported on HoloLens worn by an operator for the Hon’ble Prime Minister to experience it live on screen at the event. The end to end connectivity from the Site to the Core and IMC Demo location at Pragati Maidan was on Vi 5G network.

Reactions from the industry –

Sanjay Malik, Sr. Vice President and Head of India Market, Nokia

“Nokia is committed towards and fully prepared to support our partners in ushering in the 5G era in India. We welcome all measures taken by the Government to facilitate the deployment of 5G technology. Our global experience in 5G rollouts shows that it will provide a strong impetus to socioeconomic growth and industrial development, contributing to the GDP and mission of Digital Bharat.”

Anku Jain, Managing Director, MediaTek India

“5G will usher in a new wave of opportunities for businesses, unlocking the next level of growth for the country. More than just seamless connectivity and fast speed, 5G technology is going to revolutionize businesses and industries, enhancing advancements, and innovation & R&D while also improving customer experiences. 5G will be a key driver for Digital India initiatives and realizing Design in India opportunities leveraging disruptive technologies like AI, cloud, IoT, and others across the ecosystem. We foresee India becoming a major hub for cutting-edge semiconductor R&D and design and the rollout of 5G services will accelerate the next wave of digital transformation. MediaTek congratulates the people of India and we are extremely proud to be a part of this significant milestone in India’s journey towards atmanirbharta.”

Arvind Bali, CEO - Telecom Sector Skill Council

“We applaud our hon’ble PM on this landmark announcement of the long-waited launch of 5G services in India. Numerous opportunities will arise for the skilled workforce in India as the demand for 5G services rises. For an estimate, in FY2021–2022 around 36,000+ competent workers were needed in India for 5G and allied technologies. Due to the increased use of internet services and apps, the demand for better telecom networks, and currently the implementation of 5G network, this gap will only widen. In order to meet this demand, TSSC has already developed courses in 5G and related technologies and created multiple Centers of Excellence and training centres across the country. To close this gap, we have also teamed up with various government, academic, and business stakeholders. India is home to a sizable talent pool, hence it is crucial that the youth is skilled, upskilled, or reskilled for this new network technology.”

Manoranjan (Mao) Mohapatra, CEO - Comviva

"The rollout of the 5G network in India will be a crucial enabler for digital transformation. We applaud our hon’ble PM on announcing the launch of the 5G services in the country. Apart from catering to the customers, the 5G technology will also add an intrinsic value to the enterprise segment in the country. The global market for 5G-enabled business applications is expected to grow to $20 billion USD over the five years and India will be a critical contributor to this expansion. 5G will not only improve connectivity across the country but also reinvent the customer experience for telco consumers apart from the traditional calling and internet services."

Manish Vyas, President, Communications, Media and Entertainment Business, and CEO, Network Services - Tech Mahindra

“5G ecosystem will unlock immense opportunities for industries across sectors, allowing them to experiment with myriad ideas to innovate and fuel the next level of growth possibilities. 5G is not just a generational leap in Network technology, it is a platform for Innovation. I often say that 5G is like the last piece of the Industry 4.0 jigsaw puzzle that will spearhead the next wave of digital disruption taking us a step closer to realizing our dream of Atmanirbhar Bharat and technological supremacy. We are extremely excited about 5G and would like to congratulate the government and the people of India on this momentous day that has made 5G a reality.”

Agendra Kumar, MD, Esri India

“The launch of 5G is truly a watershed moment for us and we are proud to be a part of this journey. As we enter this new dawn of technological disruption, the advent of 5G will not only revolutionize the Indian telecom industry but will have a huge social, economic, and global impact. In all this, GIS technology and geospatial infrastructure will play a pivotal role in helping Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) in designing and managing their networks, assets, and operations in an integrated way, and be agile enough to grow as their business requirements change, while ensuring next-generation customer experience. Together, 5G and GIS will play a transformational role in the success of Digital India.”

Ashish Rai, Vice Chairman and President, Aurionpro Solutions

"The launch of 5G services in India will truly be a game changer across industry verticals such as technology, BFSI, supply chain, among others. 5G will unlock new digital capabilities and employment opportunities for the country’s youth and boost India’s economic growth. We welcome the launch of 5G services by our Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi which will help cater to the needs of small and medium businesses, while connecting people from remote corners of the country. This is a path-breaking initiative which has the potential to transform the Indian economy and help in achieving our PM's vision of being a USD 1 trillion digital economy."

Ramesh Natarajan, CEO - Redington Limited

“The launch of 5G services marks a very significant inflection point in the Digital India journey. 5G ushers in not just world-class Telecom infrastructure but also the possibilities for revolutionizing several industries that can take advantage of low-latency, high-bandwidth and network slicing capabilities, among others. These powerful 5G capabilities will also help make the technology powering several use-cases appear “invisible” and overcome Technology Friction (the gap between the rate of technology innovation and the rate of technology adoption). With the combination of 5G technology and the strong ecosystem of start-ups and research institutions in India, this roll-out promises to bring to fruition use-cases that have not yet been imagined. This launch is a strong driver for India to be the forefront of the technology in the years ahead.”

Chirag Gupta, CEO & Co-Founder, Deyor

“Fast and reliable internet is the most significant currency in the tech world today and is just as crucial for the tourism industry. It is essential for customer retention–the new developments in the digital space will allow better guest personalization, enhance access to information, and streamline operations industry-wide. Additionally, it will optimize costs for the entire business. Along with providing increased bandwidth, 5G's low latency and high density will open space for the use of technology like robotics. For tourism, this is a huge milestone as the age of covid calls for lesser physical contact, and our field is no different. We strongly believe this new era will open up immense possibilities for the travel industry--smart airports, smart hotels, and in the coming years, perhaps an enhanced virtual experience for the user that need not be bound by any physical constraints at all.”

Lt. Gen. Dr. S P Kochhar, DG, COAI

‘’We are honored and thankful to our Honorable Prime Minister for launching first 5G services at IMC 2022. We are excited about the long-awaited 5G launch in India. Telecom operators are geared up to provide the high-speed services that are poised to transform consumer experience. 5G will open new avenues for each sector from manufacturing, healthcare, and augmented entertainment to even smart city projects by integrating with new-age technologies like IoT, M2M learning, drones, AI, and big data analytics. We will see a multifaceted impact in terms of creating opportunities for people and businesses that have the potential to completely change the economic landscape of India. With a goal of reaching a $5 trillion economy by 2025, 5G is the road map for the socio-economic development and future prosperity of our nation.”

Kunal Nagarkatti, CEO - Clover Infotech

“The launch of 5G services in India is a great move by the government towards building a digital-native community. By equipping us with high speed internet, low latency, and massive capacity, 5G will enable us to derive maximum benefits out of today’s highly distributed world of cloud, edge devices, and artificial intelligence. I think it would be interesting to witness 5G disrupting our lives further and leading to the creation of new industries, products and business models. While 4G unlocked the app economy, 5G is poised to unleash the true potential of a digital and connected India that we live in today.”

Puneet Gupta, Managing Director & VP India/Saarc, NetApp

“5G will be a game-changer for tech transformation in India – We are increasingly seeing players in the technology industry and business community invest in building edge-computing environments to support AI-driven IoT. The advances it will bring – everything from self-driving cars and smart cities, to connected healthcare and industrial IoT, will truly revolutionize every sector and open new avenues for businesses across regions. 5G, with its machine-to-machine connectivity, will lead to an exponential increase in data. How enterprises leverage this data is what will define their future success.”

Rahul Sasi, Founder and CEO - CloudSEK

“5G provides two primary benefits - better bandwidth and latency. 5G technology architecture is fundamentally more secure than its predecessors. The cyber threats impacting 5G won’t be because of its architecture but rather because of two other reasons 1) implementation flaws in 5G. 2) the new technologies that started because of 5G

Implementation flaws in 5G

5G architecture is built on top of API, the same technology stack that powers the web. This means the future of telecom security would be in the hands of web hackers. Low-skilled web hackers might be able to read a voice message if a 5G network is not implemented correctly.

New technologies started because of 5G

Let’s take, for example, all the self-driving cars out there. Each of them is using cameras to observe their surroundings. As of today, those streaming videos are sent to a central server for processing, and there is definitely a latency issue. In the future, every self-driving car will be able to stream their data to each other and process them to understand their surroundings better. The speed and latency provided by 5G make this task seamless.”

Marshal Correia, Vice President, and General Manager, India, South Asia - Red Hat

"5G technology is bringing a new era of innovation and possibilities to the telecommunications industry which is unlocking considerable value for consumers and enterprises. CSPs are preparing themselves to embrace this unprecedented business transformation as this opens up new and reliable revenue streams. They are ramping up their evolution towards cloud-native architectures and containers and working to scale their networks to support increased demand. In this effort, open radio access network (RAN) solutions offer standardized disaggregation of the RAN, decoupling hardware and software, to give them more freedom of choice for which CSPs are looking to implement a container platform that is ready to take on the intensive demands of this evolution for their RAN and for new 5G use cases, such as network slicing, IoT and industrial IoT.

Red Hat is committed and excited to play a key role in this transformation with open software innovation which guarantees choice and reduces financial risk for CSPs. Red Hat is working consistently with customers and partners to offer one of the strongest open RAN ecosystems available today by enhancing Red Hat OpenShift with the features required to build and deliver a modern open RAN and driving 5G adoption with Kubernetes-based networking to help CSPs tackle competitive use cases, including 5G core, edge computing, IoT, machine learning and more.”

Sanjiv Mehta, President - FICCI

“The launch of 5G services by the Hon’ble PM is yet another momentous milestone in the nation’s economic journey and will facilitate both ease-of-doing-business and the ease of living. It will revolutionise our digital sector and will also augment agriculture, disaster management, healthcare, education, logistics and transport, fintech, industry4.0 and is a big push for AatmNirbhar Bharat.”

Arun Chawla, Director General, FICCI

“It is a generational leap that can help increase the telecom sector’s contribution to GDP to 8-9 per cent from 6.5 per cent presently. 5G services would comprehensively boost the country's digital ecosystem, ensure last mile service delivery and accelerate the nation's socio-economic progress.”

Saurabh Kumar Sahu, Managing Director and Lead – Communications, Media and Technology, Accenture India

“The launch of 5G in India marks a crucial milestone and will be a game changer in accelerating India’s journey towards digital transformation. As an enabler of the next wave of digitalization, 5G will not only catalyze new opportunities for the telecom industry but also for enterprises across industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, retail, mining among others. It has the potential to improve productivity, optimize service quality and reduce costs, leading to increased economic output and better consumer experiences. At Accenture, we are committed to helping telcos and enterprises navigate the 5G ecosystem by combining our deep industry expertise, breadth of technology capabilities and experience of enabling digital transformation at scale to meet their innovation and growth agenda.

Metaverse and 5G

5G with its superior speed and throughput benefits combined with the latest technologies, has the potential to transform telcos into enablers of the metaverse. Telcos enjoy the advantage of having a large subscriber base, and that gives them the inherent ability to bring more people and innovative solutions to life - on the metaverse. To unlock the full spectrum of opportunities within the metaverse, telcos must act now by expanding beyond traditional connectivity services to new capabilities and operating models.”