NEW DELHI: The fifth-generation or 5G use cases that cater specifically to India’s requirements, can also be potentially replicated across nations on a global scale, according to a top executive of the Swedish telecom gear maker Ericsson.

“I believe that India will leapfrog and the kinds of use cases we do in India, both for consumer and enterprise will be replicated in the world. The use cases that we will start with are enhanced mobile broadband, which is, on your devices and fixed wireless access. It’s not only about speed, it will be related to gaming, the way we watch videos, and the way we watch sports, more on the consumer side as well as the enterprise side,” said Nitin Bansal, Managing Director, Ericsson India and Head of Network Solutions, Southeast Asia, Oceania and India, Ericsson.

Bansal was speaking in a fireside chat at the ETTelecom 5G Congress 2023 Wednesday.

Bansal said that enterprises have shown interest in 5G, as they believe that the technology will help drive efficiency and solve some of the problems being faced today.

“On the consumer side, I believe it will be more towards making it interesting for the normal users to watch games, to look at augmented virtual reality, we saw some examples about education being one of those sectors. While we start with these basic ones, we will evolve towards the more complicated ones,” said Bansal.

Department of Telecommunications (DoT) secretary K. Rajaraman said communication technologies evolve continuously and the economic impact of 5G can be assessed once the market players have an understanding of its benefits.

With more use cases, and offloading of data traffic from 4G networks to 5G networks, more spectrum for fifth-generation networks will need to be opened up. “India has done right by allowing for more frequency bands for 5G,” he said.

“Perhaps, the telecom side service providers need to enter into very deep and long-term partnerships with the ecosystem, be it with the industry or the government, or with any other sector,” he said. “It’s very important for them to educate the stakeholders, groups, or the verticals about the potential of this technology. I’m sure that in collaboration, this will be a technology where the ecosystem will require to play a very important role.” The official said that the telecom department has been working with more than 20 ministries to identify efficiency, safety, and security gains that can be achieved by using 5G. ”Already several of the single public sector undertakings and ministries are working on them. And I hope that this becomes mass scale in the several months that follow.”

The Ericsson executive said that India needs to further review the spectrum availability, such as in the mid-band and 6GHz. “We have to start looking at developing the standards for 6G and identify what 6G will do and then look at how we standardize and make sure we are ready in time for 6G,” he said.

ETTelecom’s Mansi Taneja moderated the fireside chat.