TV RAMACHANDRAN: WILL GREEN 5G HELP EMBRACE A MORE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE?

5G and the technologies it enables are critical tools in a wide arsenal that can help nations effectively address the climate challenges of our time

Telecom users in India as well as across the world have a ravenous appetite for data-rich services, particularly video. The humongous growth in data consumption per subscriber per month in India, however, is amazing and one of the highest in the world. With the onset of the 4G mobile broadband era, the consumption pattern changed from a level of less than 1GB per month before 2016 to the current level of over 16 GB per month (industry average). Some individual operators are reporting usage as high as 18 GB or 19 GB per month per subscriber.

With India now having around 800 million broadband connections for a population of 1.4 billion, and growth shifting more to rural and semi-urban areas where the demand is higher for video traffic, it is clear that our growth in data consumption will continue to rise sharply. Apart from the rural pressure, our net penetration is expected to rise from the current level of less than 60% to about 80%-90% in line with economies like China, Korea, the USA, etc. This will provide a further sharp kick in data demand and consumption.

The above scenario makes us consider the implication on energy consumption because, instinctively, one tends to associate the higher data requirement with a direct increase in energy consumption. However, the latter is true only if other aspects like technology remain the same. In this case of telecom, we have a good option in 5G which is a more energy-efficient technology as compared to 4G.