India on a Fast Track till 2022!

Data consumption in India has steadily been growing, and generating far more traffic than voice calls over the past year. Softening prices, affordable smartphones, and zero-price offerings are seeing gigabytes consumed in billions, with video streaming becoming the new frontier.

The wireless industry is now moving rapidly into its next phase as a not-so-wireless industry. That is, wireless as one component, along with content and Internet, in an ecosystem that provides all communications and content in one bundle. The next phase is the displacement of the cable provider with one wireless-driven provider controlling wireless, content, and Internet.

As India moves to a dominance of LTE and WCDMA/HSPA technologies (85 percent by 2022), it seems 5G is not far behind. Reliance Jio and Airtel have both promised to bring 1Gbps–3Gbps Internet speed to consumers by mid 2018. By 2022, 5G subscriptions are expected to be touching 3 million. And IoT cellular connections are estimated to reach 191 million by 2022, from the current 23 million.

With mobile broadband as the key platform, Indian operators will need to explore technologies, such as carrier aggregation and small cells to enhance overall efficiency and increase capacity. It has also revolutionized the way enterprises communicate and access information. The users’ expectations are much higher, and the pressure is on to deliver a connected experience, anytime, anywhere. Fast, reliable connectivity has become an absolute must and downtime is not an option. A plethora of industries rely on high-speed mobile connectivity. It makes operations more efficient, enables constant monitoring of equipment, facilitates sharing of information, and ensures easy and rapid updates to software – it is at the core of any business that has remote, mobile assets.

As CSPs struggle to get GST revised from the current rate of 18 percent to 5 percent, IT companies are ensuring that they capitalize on the GST rollout and facilitate Indian enterprises to be compliant with the new GST regulations. Cloud-based service providers and data center service providers are also tapping into this opportunity.