FTTH + WI-FI = SOLUTION FOR INDIA'S DIGITAL ECONOMY

India must explore FTTx and modern Wi-Fi solutions to address 5G monetisation challenges and create an inclusive, sustainable, digital society

- TV RAMACHANDRAN

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, India strives to lead the global digital revolution by making significant progress in high-speed Internet connectivity. India has made commendable strides in deploying cutting-edge 5G mobile technology, covering approximately 10,000 towns and deploying 3.4 lakh stations by August 2023. Despite this achievement, the lack of 'killer' use cases poses significant monetisation challenges globally and in India.

Since a base station could have three or more cells, one could do a marketing stroke by stating that over a million cells have been set up. While this is indeed admirable, one must pause and note that it is also an open secret, globally and in India, that there are huge monetisation challenges in 5G due to a lack of 'killer' use cases.

NEED FOR A BALANCED DIGITAL ECONOMY

India can ill afford to waste its financial resources on projects with nil or negative returns and hence, alternative technological solutions need to be considered for digital progress. It needs to also be appreciated that a good digital economy needs to be a balanced one by technology.

A lopsided economy, with over-dependence on fixed broadband, mobile broadband, or any other technology, would not be adequately efficient or sustainable for the modern era. There needs to be balanced and holistic development of all elements of digital infrastructure including fixed networks, mobile, satellite, Wi-Fi, data centres, CDNs, etc. to ensure optimum results.

As is well known, mobile technology is subject to the characteristics of RF engineering. The speed delivered, the reliability, and the consistency are dependent on multiple variables like distance from the tower, foliage and/or thickness of walls between handset and tower, number of subscribers logging onto the tower at that time, as well as the speed of movement the subscriber.