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Spectrum, Skill Development Key To Readiness Of 5G Devices

The handsets in India are far behind when it comes to adopting 5G as there are open issues like spectrum capacity crunch and lack of ecosystem to enable right skill-set, industry experts told in a panel discussing the readiness of 5G devices, at IMC 2019.

Shubhashis Gangopadhyay, research director, India Development Foundation, stated that there is no point in talking about the device readiness for 5G unless the ecosystem for enabling right skill-set for manufacturers is created in India.

“We don’t have to worry as we won’t be producing devices here but just importing. Material value of the devices are miniscule as compared to the value of the ideas that are into that machine in India. Unless we extract the value of ideas, we are going to just stay far behind globally”, said Gangopadhyay.

P.V.G. Menon, President and CEO, Vann Consulting, while moderating the panel said that while we have a very high technology designs and better software in India, we see that there are a very few system designers, especially independent system designers in India.

“5G transformation is happening at a very fast pace and the fact is that the phone industry in India are still assemblers, this a very big policy question that needs to be answered” said Kriti Gupta vice president, technology & economic strategy at Qualcomm.

Akshay Aggarwal, Director of Technology, Mediatek highlighted the importance of creating training hubs for providing the right skill-set not just in India, but also in places like China.

“So far we haven’t seen a completely independent design house in India, most of the OEMs in India are based out of China, thus we have taken efforts to spur domestic industry by offering a training programme for Indian brands to set up their design houses in China to leverage the ecosystem from there to here” said Aggarwal.

Talking about innovation in the industry, Rajat Kathuria, Director, Chief Executive at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) said that the Indians outside India are far more innovative.

“The ecosystem does not exist in the country to innovate. In addition to design, we need to think about creating that ecosystem,” said Rajat.

Talking about the affordability of 5G devices, Menon said that the pricing will go down rapidly, as in a market research, it was found that the average selling prices have dropped by 50%.

“Affordability will eventually happen, operators can opt for bundling which gives the handset at a very low cost, but in terms of policy, it’s better if the government does not intervene and do anything to encourage affordability of 5G handsets” said Gangopadhyay.―Gadgets Now

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