Reliance Jio on Friday said telecom tariffs in the country cannot be raised as there were a large number of people who still used feature phones and companies needed to innovate around data to perform.
“There are still around 400 million Indians who use feature phone and hence tariff can’t be raised to reach out to them,” Reliance Jio President Mathew Oommen said at the India Mobile Congress. He said companies needed to focus on innovation or they would be displaced.
“As a service provider, we need to know are we going to make GB (gigabyte) cost a little bit lower and make money or little bit higher and make money — that is not the mechanism. We have to innovate or we will get displaced,” Mr. Oommen said.
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He cited the example of the U.S. and Chinese Internet giants who have grown rich on the basis of data.
“We live in gigabyte economy and not product economy. We, as service providers, are the enablers for any digital transformation. That digital transformation is enabled by ultra broadband. We need to be invested in data science, artificial and machine learning -- that is going to enable us transform quickly,” Mr. Oommen said.
Talking about 5G deployment, he said the ecosystem would be ready by 2019-20, but affordable devices for mass adoption of the service would start coming in India in 2021.
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“5G ecosystem will be available sometime in 2019-2020. We in india need to take 5G to every part of India. For that, 2021 is when we will have devices that will be affordable. 5G as a technology impact is not just in telecom but it is across, reshaping every single industry,” Mr. Oommen said.