India has the use cases, but ‘massification’ must happen in the captive private networks (dedicated telecom network for a particular area like a factory, mining, etc) for the Indian telecom industry to grow, apart from investments in 5G advanced networks and 6G infrastructure in the next two-three years, a top official at Nokia India said.
He also said that while private captive networks are being installed in greenfield projects of various sectors whether it is manufacturing or real estate, it should happen in brownfield projects too so that the telecom sector can gain out it.
“I understand that as of now massification is not there, but the data is there so now it is the question of how you crunch that data…There are many Mining customers in the world who have deployed their own private wireless networks, and they are much more secured. Now of course how much of it has happened in India, we saw them are in the initial stages, but at least they are global references for all of them. If those also become potentially the use cases which are successful in India that will also further help to enhance the revenue and that is what we see,” Tarun Chhabra, Country Head, Nokia India told businessline on Thursday.
He said the way the network is improving in India now – whether uplink, downlink, throughput increasing and latency decreasing – and are much secured, they can be used for private wireless networks.
Chhabra noted that whether these deployments would happen this year or in 2026, the country will see some use cases already happening in the near future.
‘5G for Enterprise’
For instance, companies like L&T and Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) have already deployed private wireless network in their facilities. Nokia, along with Bharti Airtel and Tech Mahindra, has deployed ‘5G for Enterprise’ solution at Mahindra’s Chakan auto manufacturing facility that enhances network connectivity that has resulted in improved speeds for software flashing, a critical operation for all vehicular dispatches.
However, there are companies like Adani Group which even after three years of acquiring spectrum for private 5G network, is yet to launch any service in the country.
Going forward, Chhabra said the Indian telecom sector would see only improvements as there is going to be more 5G deployments, average revenue per user (ARPUs) going up, the number of 5G mobile subscribers will grow from around 290 million and more private wireless networks will happen over a period of time, which can be additional source of revenue.
He also noted that the overall consumption of data has also gone up to 28 GB per user per month from 19 GB per user per month earlier, and also fixed wireless access (FWA) have seen growth that may reach up to 10 million users by end of 2025.
“The FWA device consumes almost 7 to 10 times the data as compared to a mobile subscriber, which means even that consumption will add in the coming quarters or months. So, these are some of the positive indicators that there are applications like FWA becoming successful, which has the potential of increasing the coverage of mobile fixed broadband coverage to more areas,” Chhabra added.
