India may emerge as China's alternative for telecom solutions, say experts

5G is expected to account up to 2 per cent of India's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2030

Amid high geopolitical uncertainty, global companies are reportedly looking towards Indian firms to offer an alternative to Chinese telecom solutions, a report by the Economic Times (ET) said. 

At a roundtable organised by industry body Nasscom, Jagdish Mitra, chief strategy officer at Tech Mahindra said, "The geopolitical situation (is) obviously causing disruptions in the supply chain. There's this conversation about China Plus One in terms of 'where will the alternative supply chain come from' and people are looking at India from every aspect of being able to deliver those solutions."

"With consumers, you can have an ARPU improvement right up to a certain limit and no consumer is going to pay double the price. So the focus is on the enterprise segment, which is going to actually drive the business case for 5G itself," said Gnanapriya C, associate vice president at software services firm Infosys, as reported by ET. 

5G is expected to account up to 2 per cent of India's gross domestic product by 2030, amounting to $180 billion. Currently, the country has second-highest number of telecom users in the world at 1.1 billion. Out of these, 740 million use 4G network. 

According to Nasscom Insight's Head Achyuta Ghosh, India would require "at least five times" the existing pool of 5G-ready technology talent to meet the demand. 

"The good part is that the 5G skill set has a large overlap with traditional Indian skill sets of AI , IoT (internet of things), Big Data, cloud diversity; those kinds of skill sets are already available, they will be required from a 5G perspective…but there would be a demand-supply gap," Ghosh said.