Four years after the ‘fastest rollout” of 5G in India, the government’s initiatives for widespread use cases have remained in the test labs, while telecom service providers are now coming up with their own methods to monetise the expensively acquired spectrum, through workarounds such as 5G slicing.
Prior to the rollout in 2022, the Department of Telecommunications had initiated meetings with 14 Indian ministries to explore 5G use-cases in India. The discussions appeared to be making headway at the time with stakeholders identifying verticals like logistics education, mining, automobile and robotics as potential use-cases, as per industry sources. However, years since the discussions only led to the creation of testing labs in educational institutions.
According to Rakesh Bhatnagar, former Advisor to DoT and current Director General, VoICE, the progress from the discussions died out due to the limited scope for monetisation within the suggested use-cases as well as the limited spectrum with telcos.
TSPs acquired 51,236 MHz of 5G spectrum in 2022 and 141.4 MHz of spectrum in 2024, costing ₹1.61 lakh crores, as per government estimates. Companies like Jio and Airtel plan to use this spectrum for FWA or 5G slicing as done by some other countries like US, China.
For example, Reliance Jio in its latest earnings call talked about using network slicing for specialized services, starting with enterprise offerings as well as gaming.
“That is something that our network is ready for, but of course we have to see if the market, the regulations, etc., are also ready for those,” said Anshuman Thakur, Senior Vice President at Jio Platforms.
However, according to telecom expert Parag Kar, these bands are insufficient to provide effective 5G slicing services.
“US’ [5G] success comes from [spectrum] capacity. India lacks headroom by design. 5G slicing for consumers will congest basic internet,” said Kar in one of his videos, attributing the issue to the spectrum scarcity, India’s high data usage per user, low ARPU and heavy reliance on mobile network.
Telcos like Airtel have flagged the challenges in monetising 5G. During the September-ending earnings call, Bharti Airtel’s Vice Chairman Gopal Vittal had said, “One of the pain points in the telecom world across the globe is that 5G has not lived up to its promise of what it was meant to. The primary use case of 5G is only speed and now it is just a more efficient way of producing the same gigabyte. It is a more efficient way of doing it, but it has not led to any monetisation.”
Nonetheless, the TSP plans to use network slicing to offer differentiated voice and data-based plans to subscribers as a means to monetise 5G as per news reports. Jio too has talked about its plans to convert its 5G network leadership into premium subscriber engagement and working closely with OEMs to improve 5G experience for users.
Aside from these solutions, allocation of spectrum for private 5G networks can be a game changer, said Bhatnagar.
“Spectrum allocation for private 5G networks in 3700-4100 MHz band or secondary use permission in 700 MHz, five kilmetres beyond Railway lines can open a new market segment that can support 5G use cases across the requirements of ministries, PSUs and private sector. A market size of ₹ 10,000 crores is likely immediately,” he said.
For now, telcos offer little beyond higher speeds and lower latencies to 5G users. As the ‘premiumisation’ loses novelty with every telco coming up with similar offerings, companies remain hard-pressed to come up with diferentiated use-cases.
Published on May 10, 2026
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