India to have biggest success of next generation telecom service, says Nokia India official

India is going to record the fastest 5 G rollout in the world and it is going to have the biggest success of the next generation telecom service with the support of the government, a senior Nokia India official said.

At an event organised by the Foreign Correspondent Club on Friday evening, Nokia India Head of Marketing and Corporate Affairs, Amit Marwah, said China had concerns over 'infiltration equipment' in the telecom sector from neighbouring countries.

We are at the right time, India is not late. The ecosystem has to develop in the rest of the country compared to other countries. We have a 5 G ready ecosystem. In India, 10 per cent of smartphones are 5 G ready. India is going to witness the fastest rollout of 5 G, which will be at least three times faster than what we have seen in 4 G, Marwah said.

The 5 G services will cover the entire country over the next couple of years -- Jio promises to do that by December 2023 and Bharti Airtel by March 2024.

Marwah said that telecom manufacturing in India is becoming robust backed by the production-linked incentive PLI scheme.

We were one of the only companies that met our target of PLI 1.0. We let go-off that scheme and let go-off the incentive of one year because PLI 2.0 was even more interesting. Volumes and scale in India are increasing so much that you have let go for a year. He said that we are part of PLI 2.0 and that we are investing more, adding more lines and adding more products.

The PLI scheme offers up to 20 times the incentive on incremental sales of telecom gears made in India. The government has added incentives for designing products in India in the second version of the PLI scheme.

Marwah said that manufacturing is a positive note in India across sectors, but definitely in telecom.

The availability of fabs that are semiconductors is the only challenge right now. 60 -- 80 per cent of what we manufacture requires semiconductors. We still need to work on that area. There is still some kind of infiltration of equipment in telecom from neighbouring countries that need to have a little more vigilance and stop at customs, according to Marwah.

Department of Telecom, Deputy Director General Policy YGSC KishoreGSC Kishore Babu said that the 5 G adoption and applications are expected to be more diverse in India compared to other countries.

Most of the use cases across the world remind us that we may have to innovate to meet most of the requirements in the coming months and years, Babu said.

Jagdish Mitra, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Growth, said 5 G is the biggest opportunity in technology for India to bridge what we have traditionally referred to as Bharat and India.

We have 62 per cent of our workforce in the agriculture sector, and 5 G presents us with a huge opportunity to convert that into the most profitable segment. Mitra said that we can deliver products to farmers by producing smarter networks and enabling high yields.

We need to have at least one lakh technicians and engineers in the next few years who have been trained specifically on 5 G courses for the new job requirements and we at TSSC are setting up Centers of Excellence and training labs with the help of the industry. Bali said 5 G is going to open up big requirements for a talented workforce and we are training the youth in new-age technologies.

He said that TSSC is developing all the curriculum and digital content for training people to meet the industry requirement.