New Delhi: According to a report by Ericsson, nearly 67 per cent users, who participated in a survey, have expressed an intention to take up 5G connectivity when it starts rolling out in India. It expects around 40 million smartphone subscribers in India to take up 5G in the first year of its rollout in the country.
Also, the network equipment provider expects 5G to start rolling out in India by the second half of 2021. Players like Jio, Airtel and Vodafone are all currently testing their 5G networks in the country.
As per the report, Ericsson predicts that 5G or the fifth generation of mobile broadband will represent around 26 percent of mobile subscriptions in India by the end of 2026, which is estimated at about 330 million subscriptions.
“The key trends are showing the need for 5G in India and the fact that people are very interested and they are actually waiting for 5g to be deployed in India. Based on the surveys, what we found was that 21 percent of smartphone users that we surveyed already have a 5G capable device,” Nitin Bansal, MD, India & Head-Networks, South East Asia, Oceania and India at Ericsson said during a press briefing.
Furthermore, there is an expectation for 5G that, it will drive further changes in the user behaviour as current 4G users who own a smartphone are spending more time on enhanced video and multi-player gaming. The trend is that the smartphone users in India are using it beyond just data and voice, and therefore with 5G, it expects this kind of consumption to increase given the faster networks.
“The other thing that came out quite clearly was interest around Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) and 5G, and this included two categories of users. One is those who are using 4G today for broadband connectivity at home, and two are those using fiber connectivity at home. We saw there was an interest from both these groups of subscribers to evolve to 5G,” Bansal added.
Inputs via The Indian Express
