New Delhi: India is gearing up for the rollout of 5G technology but only 5% respondents, who participated in a poll, said they are likely to upgrade to the faster mobile network in 2022 and 43% respondents stated they were not willing to pay anything more than current tariff they bear for 3G/4G service.
The survey conducted by social media community platform LocalCircles also revealed that 24% of 9,965 pollees didn’t see themselves investing in a new 5G device, altogether. However, 20% indicated that they already had a device that supported 5G services and only 4% were hoping to buy new, suitable devices this year. Another 12% were looking to purchase a 5G-enabled phone in the first half of 2023 and 8% in the later half of the year. A sizable 10% are considering purchasing a new 5G mobile phone in 2024.
Although Indian government has nudged telecom operators as well as phone makers to update with latest technologies for smooth 5G rollout at the earliest, a report said that Indian consumers may have to wait some more to experience “real” 5G as they will first get the services that run on 4G telecom infrastructure, also known as non-standalone (NSA) 5G.
The poll also found that 43% of 10,019 participants would be willing to pay up to 10% more than the current tariff. Only 10% were positive about giving out 10-25% more money and a mere 2% fell in the last bracket – pay 25-50% more tariff.
The LocalCircles poll also sought to understand the expectations Indian mobile users have from 5G service. Of the nearly 10,000 respondents, 19% stated that they expected reduction in call drop and connectivity issues and 12% hoped for improvement in data speed. A tiny fraction of 5% pollers hoped for improved availability of data networks and 3% were hopeful to see a reduction in spam or unsolicited calls and messages.
For 39% participants, a resolution to all of these conditions is important before they make the final call of switching to a 5G network. The other 5% were convinced that 5G would resolve these troubles.
The poll received a total of over 29,000 responses from mobile service consumers located in 318 districts across India. 64% of these respondents were men while the other 36% were women. A little less than half, 47% participants, belonged to Tier 1 cities, 34% were from Tier 2 and 19% were from Tier 3, 4 and other rural districts.
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