Telecom companies, which haven’t been able to offer a full 5G experience to customers, are failing to monetise it. Curiously, this seems to be the fate of the odd ones—1G, 3G and 5G.India recently became the fastest 5G rollout nation in the world. The country’s top two carriers, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, have collectively splurged around $25 billion in buying 5G airwaves and launching their next-generation wireless broadband services. Between them, they have 165 million 5G customers. But neither of them has seen any serious monetisation of their 5G businesses even 18 months after they introduced next-gen networks.
Telecom companies attribute the challenge in monetisation to the continuing absence of compelling 5G use cases and applications for both retail and enterprise users and a yet-tomature devices ecosystem.
Industry veterans whom ET spoke to have a different take on…
