According to data by Ookla, 4G availability is growing in the country, with the ‘4G Service’ metric (percentage of known operator locations where a device has access to 4G-LTE) increasing from 93.5% in Q4 2020 to 96% in Q2 2021.

NEW DELHI: 4G technology will continue to play a significant role in the Indian telecom market even after fifth-generation or 5G technology is launched here, said a top executive of global network testing firm Ookla.

“4G is already the dominant network technology in India and will continue to play a significant role in the market for some years, even after the launch of 5G… We have also observed some recent performance improvements in terms of 4G speeds as operators have deployed more spectrum resources following spectrum auctions held in March this year,” Doug Suttles, CEO, GM & Co-founder, Ookla, told ETTelecom.

According to data by Ookla, 4G availability is growing in the country, with the ‘4G Service’ metric (percentage of known operator locations where a device has access to 4G-LTE) increasing from 93.5% in Q4 2020 to 96% in Q2 2021.

Overall, the median download speeds increased from 10.64 Mbps in Q1 2020, to 15.67 Mbps in Q2 2021, Suttles said highlighting that India ranks 122nd globally in terms of mobile network speeds (as of July 2021).

In terms of data usage, India ranks amongst the regions with the highest mobile data usage per smartphone globally, at 14.6GB per month, according to Swedish telecom gear maker Ericsson’s latest Mobility Report. This is higher than the global average of 9GB per month.

“The data indicates that the market is in a very strong position to drive the uptake of 5G services when they are launched in India, catering to the faster speeds that the market demands,” Suttles said.

Furthermore, the rapid adoption of 5G services in the market is likely to be driven by Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN), Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS), and affordable 5G handsets, he said.

Indian and global telcos alike are banking on Open RAN as a viable way to slash down the costs involved in building and maintaining a 5G network.

India’s Vodafone Idea has called government support for startups and system integrators (SI) to deploy Open RAN at a large scale whereas its rival Bharti Airtel said the inter-functionality enabled by Open RAN can be leveraged to build and deploy innovative applications based on new engineering principles.

For providing low-latency high-capacity bandwidth, telcos have been demanding a cut in base reserve price of the premium 700MHz band as they consider the current price of Rs 6,568 crore per unit too high to bid for.

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) though has made no reference to the regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for the base price revision despite the coveted band going unsold in the spectrum auctions conducted in March 2021.

“Going forward, if TRAI is able to auction off C-band spectrum (3.3GHz to 3.6GHz) and also secure bids for the 700MHz, it will let telcos increase both the capacity and coverage of their networks. Telcos can then also ensure that the prices are at a level that will help balance demand with network capacity,” the Ookla executive said.

https://cio.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/internet/4g-to-remain-significant-in-india-even-after-5g-launch-ookla/85972072