Excited for 5G, but Indians don't want to loose their pockets for it: Report

43% of people who want to switch to 5G in the country are not willing to pay anything more than the current price for 3G or 4G services.

India has started 5G service at some places in select cities. 43% of people who want to switch to 5G are those who are not willing to pay anything more than the current price for 3G or 4G services. A report has come on Friday, in which such figures have been found. According to a report by online community platform LocalCircle, many more users are ready for 5G if it provides solutions to problems like call drops/connections, network availability and low speed. Another 43% indicated that they could pay extra up to 10%. Only 2% of them expressed their willingness to pay 25-50 percent higher price for 5G.

As against 4G speeds of 40-50 Mbps depending on region and connectivity in India, 5G service is expected to deliver speeds of 300 Mbps or higher. Reliance Jio and Airtel have identified Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Varanasi, Chandigarh, Delhi, Jamnagar, Gandhinagar, Mumbai, Pune, Lucknow, Kolkata, Siliguri, Gurugram and Hyderabad for the first phase of the launch.

What do people have to say about 5G, how excited are they?

According to the report, only 5 percent of the mobile subscribers surveyed are ready to switch to 5G in 2022. While 20 percent of the people surveyed said that they already have a 5G device, 4 percent are likely to get the service this year. Another 20 percent said they would buy 5G devices in 2023. Out of over 500 million smartphone users in India, around 100 million are expected to have 5G-ready devices by the end of this year. Around 24 per cent people said that they have no plans to buy a new upgraded device in the near future, while another 22 per cent have not made up their mind yet.

The Department of Telecom met operators as well as smartphone manufacturers earlier this week to update the government about their plans so that the 5G roll-out can happen at the earliest. Samsung said that they are working with their operator partners and are committed to rolling out the OTA update to all their 5G devices by mid-November. Apple said that it will start rolling out 5G for iPhone users in December. Most mobile customers expect that upgrading to 5G service will reduce call drop/connect issues, provide better network availability and increase speed.