89% consumers may upgrade to 5G, 48% to switch network providers: Report

As India gears up to roll out its 5G services likely this month, a new report by Ookla, showed that 89 per cent of consumers wish to upgrade to the spectrum and 48 per cent would switch their service providers. Only 20 per cent of the survey respondents would wait for their network provider to upgrade to the 5G services. 

Addressing the inaugural event of the International Telecommunication Union's Regional Standardisation Forum (RSF) for Asia and Oceania region, Minister of State for Telecom Devusinh Chauhan on Monday said the 5G services are expected to be rolled out in about a month.

India is likely to deploy indigenously developed and manufactured 5G telecom gears by end of this year, he added.
 

The report released on Sunday, the connectivity insights provider conducted a survey consisting of 2,000 smartphone users, aged between 18 and above, spanning across urban and rural India.

While 14 per cent of the consumers would like to avail the services after upgrading their handset to a 5G-enabled one, 7 per cent would like to wait for their current contract to come to an end. Only 2 per cent respondents suggested that they would not like to upgrade to 5G technology.

The report stated that 70 per cent of the respondents would increase their use of video streaming and 68 per cent would like to boost their mobile gaming, only if the mobile internet connections were to get better.
 

Only 1.4 per cent of respondents stated that they are happy with the current technology and are not likely to upgrade to 5G. 

Sylwia Kechiche, principal analyst, Ookla, said, "while mobile users in India are among the most data-intensive users in the world, India's 4G/LTE networks have become a bottleneck for demand."

India's biggest ever auction of telecom spectrum that concluded on August 1 received a record Rs 1.5 trillion of bids, with Mukesh Ambani's Jio cornering nearly half of all the airwaves sold with an Rs 88,078 crore bid.

Jio acquired the most spectrum, especially in the sought after C-band spectrum (2,440 MHz), but it was the only operator that acquired the 700 MHz band. Bharti Airtel, on the other hand, has already reached out to Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung to deploy 5G services.

"Both Airtel and Jio splurged on C-band spectrum at auction, acquiring spectrum in all of the 22 telecom circles, while Vodafone acquired spectrum only in its priority circles. Having access to contiguous spectrum helps to achieve faster, lower latency, and greener 5G services", added the report.