New DelhiIt’s been exactly one month since Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched 5G in India – with services now available in all major cities – but experts say there has been little discussion about the technology’s potential to advance in areas such as financial inclusion. Or about issues like the role of government, and how legacy institutions can adapt to make the best use of 5G.
After the October 2 launch, commentary in the tech space focused largely on how 5G could be game changer and potentially enable industries to embrace technological change on a large scale.
However, concerns remain about how the old ecosystem will survive. Dermot Mee, chief operating officer of Switzerland-based Singularity Group, told ThePrint that discussions focused only on incremental improvements to enable 5G.
Singularity Group offers courses on upskilling for industry leaders who are keen to move to new technologies such as AI and robotics.
“5G has the potential to bring an entirely new population into the economy. Many people think it will accelerate existing businesses. This is true but it is an incremental approach; It is basically saying that I will reduce my costs and increase my productivity by using 5G,” Mee said.
“The 5G opportunity in India is completely different. I think the idea is to really bring unbanked people into the system. It is marrying 5G connectivity with local brick-and-mortar businesses so you can build trust,” he said.
This aspect is also expressed in a white paper Released earlier this year by Tata Consultancy Services. The paper says that the post 5G disruption has the potential to improve banking and financial services across the country, especially in rural areas.
“The impact of 5G on banking will be profound as higher speeds, lower latency and higher bandwidth will not only enable banks and financial institutions to offer a better digital experience, but also create high-end user-centric digital connectivity,” it says. ,
“With faster data accessibility, 5G has the potential to drive innovation in all forms, enhance back-end processes, physical branches and customer experience, and drive an actively fine-tuned interconnected ecosystem,” adds the paper .
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challenges for government
According to Me, one of the main challenges is the lack of trust among people in mobile banking.
“I think the biggest challenge with the rapid expansion of mobile devices in India is that people still don’t trust the system across devices for a lot of their commerce,” Mee said. “You have to add local banking, like having a local bank and then using that as an education hub, so that people can trust a financial institution.”
He said that Europe and America are reimagining institutions like banks and post offices as education centers.
“So, this is a way to take a massive technological leap forward with the need to build trust, so that people can actually use these technologies – and that will grow the whole economy,” he said.
Experts have also highlighted the large-scale deployment that would be needed to properly leverage 5G. According to Professor Abhay Karandikar, Director, IIT Kanpur, a major bottleneck will be the commissioning of the data transport network.
“While the idea is noble and once this policy is implemented, I am sure, it will usher in substantial efforts from the government and help fintech to flourish, one of the major constraints being widespread deployment and mobile Backhaul is (basically backhaul. end connectivity) which is basically the transport network (of data),” explained Karandikar.
“Fiber accessibility is also an aspect of consideration as you have to connect 5G base stations to network operators. I hope these challenges will be explored in detail once it is deployed,” he said.
In addition, the government will play a pivotal role To ensure that there is more capital inflow to areas that see such rapid changes.
“You (the government) have to make it attractive for people to capitalize on emerging technologies,” Mi stressed. “Therefore, a change in the capital gains structure is important from a taxation perspective, giving large companies a tax advantage to spend more on research and development and invest in emerging sectors.”
There is also a big concern whether new technology (such as 5G) can be sustainable or not.
“With something like 5G, there will be many people who will be there very quickly,” Mee said. “This is exactly the same thing that happened with online education. People rushed to start an edtech company. For me, it’s okay to have a stage rise, give something and then fail. This is not necessarily the view that online education overall is a bad idea. It simply means that a special offer can happen very quickly. But it’s not like it was a bad idea in principle.”
(Edited by VS Chandrasekhar)
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