India, with nearly 800 million 4G subscribers, began its deployment of the 5G network in the fourth quarter of 2022 with the country's top two telecom operators – Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel (Airtel) – separately announcing plans to achieve full 5G coverage nationwide by the end of 2023 or at the end of first-quarter 2024, according to DIGITIMES Research's new report on India's telecom industry.
Although their initial deployment still mainly focuses on adopting conventional telecom equipment, Reliance Jio has continued to test 5G Open RAN solutions that integrate in-house developed software with partners' hardware. Airtel, on the other hand, has noted that it plans to incorporate Open RAN into its system at the end of 2023.
With the support from India's Production Linked Incentive (PLI) program, shipments of Open RAN equipment developed with in-house technologies and manufactured locally in India are expected to ramp up year after year in the next 2-5 years, the report's data shows.
India-based telecom operators are having a serious issue over their high costs due to the 4G network's low penetration rate at only 70% in the country, far from hitting saturation, while their average revenue per user (ARPU) was only US$2.
To ease the pressure, Reliance Jio and Airtel both plan to adopt Open RAN equipment and will use microwave for backhaul transmission to cut down their 5G construction costs. Furthermore, both operators are set to introduce 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) services to create revenue streams outside of handset sales.
Taiwan-based manufacturers of 5G FWA customer premise equipment (CPE) and small cells will stand a chance of tapping into India for orders, but it will also require the makers to establish plants locally for making network communication products.
