4G is going to be earning the maximum revenues for the telcos in 2022 as well. All the private telcos in the country have already been able to reach almost every part of India with their 4G services. While 5G is going to launch in 2022, 4G is still going to make the biggest difference in a consumer’s life. In the coming years, the relevance of 4G would reduce, but 2022 is still too early for the telcos to give up on 4G. There’s a lot of headroom for expanding 4G coverage and bringing affordable connectivity for every Indian. Indians still haven’t been able to experience what true 4G networks can deliver in a consistent manner. Network congestion and 4G go hand-in-hand in India because of the sheer number of people that live in the country.
Telcos Wouldn’t Have Spent Thousands of Crores for 4G Spectrum if it Wasn’t Important
To make it simple for everyone to understand from a business point of view, there are a lot more 4G devices in the market than 5G ones. If the telcos were to shift their focus on 5G completely, they would be catering to a very small number of consumers. While 5G is also for enterprise customers, the volume of revenues that 4G services promise at least for the next two to three years, 5G can’t bring. The telecom operators spent thousands of crores on purchasing spectrum from the government in 2021. If they wanted to shift to 5G completely, they wouldn’t have done that. There can be a counterargument that all of the 4G spectrum bought could be with the aim of repurposing it for 5G NSA later. The thing is, it won’t be false, but also it wouldn’t make sense to do that as it would involve costs and would also require an additional 5G spectrum along with a ready market, which India hasn’t become until now.
