India plans to roll out state-of-the-art 5G telecom services in the next four years, a senior official said, as the nation rushes to catch up with its Asian peers. “We are not there yet,” Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said in an interview in New Delhi, adding that the complete rollout of 5G will be done by 2022. “5G won’t be driven by supply, it’ll be driven by demand and the rest of industry needs to wake up to this.” The South Asian nation, traditionally a laggard in embracing the latest technology in telecommunications, will follow South Korea, Japan and China, countries where 5G service will be offered within the next two years. The high-speed and low-latency service will help Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Digital India plan, which seeks to broaden Internet access. The new technology has advantages of massive connectivity, low power consumption and boasts download speeds and capacity that can enable autonomous vehicles, drones, remotely assisted surgeries and traffic control. A slight delay, however, might actually be beneficial for India, according to Sanford C. Bernstein’s Hong Kong-based analyst Christopher Lane, who expects South Korea to launch these services by next March, Japan late next year and China, along with most Western major cities, in 2020. “India needs China to launch to drive economies of scale and lower the cost of 5G handsets. I think 2022 or later is appropriate for India,” Lane said in an email. South Korea, which recently tested its 5G technology during the Winter Olympics in February with self-driving cars, virtual reality games and a motion-detection system to ward off menacing wild boars, is planning an airwaves auction to commercially deploy 5G wireless services. Japanese firms are also gearing up, as are U.S. carriers. Italy is targeting a September auction of the spectrum that could be used for 5G, while the U.K. sold bandwidth in April that included some earmarked for these services. The Hong Kong government is even considering giving airwaves away for free. India’s telecom regulator last week proposed floor prices for auctioning spectrum dedicated for 5G rollout, although the auction dates have not been announced. As part of the rollout, India is aiming to increase its fiber backbone to 2.5 million km by 2022 from 1.5 million km now. A denser fiber network will aid operators in gearing up for speedier, content-heavy 5G services and move away from the discount-led battle for market share that began after upstart Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. debuted with 4G services and offered free voice calls in 2016. “A robust optic fiber network is also very important, both for front haul and the back haul,” said Anthea Lai, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst in Hong Kong. “The more fiber the better it is for 5G services.” So far, telecom infrastructure has taken a backseat to physical infrastructure as India struggles to beef up its roads, ports and airports. “Digital infrastructure is invisible infrastructure. Just because it’s invisible, people are not willing to spend on it and promote it,” Sundararajan said. “And that needs to change.”
India plans to roll out 5 G services by 2022 , while South Korea , turkey and turkey will begin services within the next two years . The technology will allow for autonomous satellites , drones , traffic control and other connected services . Meanwhile , Japan and US carriers are readying themselves ; Italy is planning to auction spectrum in September ; the UK buys spectrum in April ; and air Kong is considering giving airwaves away for free .