India is one of Nokia’s top ten top ten markets in terms of business volume, according to Josh Aroner, Vice President, Global Customer Marketing Nokia. Speaking with businessline on the sidelines of the recently concluded India Mobile Congress Aroner further noted that the country will see larger benefits from recently commenced 5G rollout if the industry is able to transition to business-to-business applications of 5G faster.
5G opens a new area of connectivity where industry can use its capabilities to drive digitisation into every aspect of business operations. With technologies such as private networks, edge computing Aroner told businessline that 5G will drive investment into digitisation from businesses that usually do not spend much on building digital capabilities. “The majority of digital investments will come from companies with physical assets, more traditional industries rather than more technology focused companies” said Aroner.
Unique alignment
“There is a unique alignment in the Indian market, where operators and the government are working together. Indian customers are also super enthusiastic about 5G services,” Aroner explained. He also noted that the Indian market is also familiar with the variety of B2B use cases of 5G and added that once 5G for enterprises is made available the deployment of enterprise applications will occur very quickly.
Nokia has deployed 500 private networks worldwide, 20 per cent of those networks are on 5G. Only recently, Nokia was selected by Bharti Airtel for 5G deployment. Nokia and Airtel have signed a multi-year agreement to deploy Nokia’s SRAN solution across 9 circles in India, helping Airtel to enhance the network capacity of its networks, in particular 4G. The rollout, which will also lay the foundation for providing 5G connectivity in the future, will see approximately 3,00,000 radio units deployed across several spectrum bands, including 900 Mhz, 1800 Mhz, 2100 Mhz and 2300 Mhz, and is expected to be completed by 2022.
As the capital expenditure for 5G commences, India is emerging to be the second largest market for telecom in the world.
Aroner noted that Indian industry is also uniquely suited for enterprise applications since it is younger than the western markets. “Indian industry has already accepted digitisation which could facilitate enterprise applications of 5G in the future,” Aroner concluded.
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Published on October 9, 2022
