Telecom revenues lag despite fastest 5G rollout in India: COAI DG
New Delhi: India's 5G rollout has been the fastest in the world but revenue has not picked up pace as apps that are generating 80 percent of the traffic are not paying for the network, according to the Director General of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), SP Kochhar.
Kochhar expressed the dilemma faced by the telecom players stating that the telecom operators do not want to burden the consumers, but someone has to bear the cost of investment being made in the network.
"The 5G rollout has been very good. It has set world records with the fastest 5G rollout. But having said that, I'm a little constrained to say that the revenues for the telecom industry have not picked up," Kochhar said in an interview with PTI.
He added that a huge amount of capital expenditure is being invested to roll out these networks. "The private players who are rolling this out definitely expect the return on that. That unfortunately is not happening on the scale as which it should. 5G rollout has brought in 4-5 large entities who are consuming 80 per cent of telecom networks bandwidth but not paying revenue."
Kochhar said, that the statements which says that the internet companies and their lobbies have said that the proposal of telecom players if accepted will adversely impact start-up ecosystems in India and throttle innovation are misleading.
"There are only 4-5 large traffic generators (LTG) who are making huge profit. Start-up ecosystem consumes only about 1.8 percent of total traffic which is very small. We want MSMEs to be exempted from this proposal but those who are consuming 80 percent of the bandwidth should pay to support infrastructure," Kochhar added.
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"We want the government to accept our proposal in-principle and then both sides will sit down and settle other formalities mutually," the interaction with PTI concluded.
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