| | October 20198IMAGINE A CONNECTED INDIA POWERED BY 5G TECHNOLOGYBy Sanjay Kaul, President of Asia, Pacific and Japan, Service Provider Business, Singapore, Cisco Inc.magine a day where your device schedules your day even before you wake up, by taking care of your necessary appointments and other tasks. This is possible with the power of the fifth generation wireless technologies which is currently sweeping the world. And India, in a bid to join the technological revolution, India must create a viable model for telco to bring 5G to India. Benefits for the country are enormous.This era of connected lives will have a far reaching impact not just in the daily lives of citizens, but will help improve the overall health of the economy. India is making great strides in this with the proliferation of smart devices in the country, backed by government schemes like Smart Cities, Digital India and BharatNet. These schemes are aimed at connecting every household with broadband network and bring tech in every sphere of lives.India, possibly the biggest beneficiary of 5G, Why?Cisco's VNI report states that there will be 2.0 billion networked devices by 2021, up from 1.4 billion in 2016. Also, the overall IP traffic is expected to grow four-fold from 2016 to 2021; a growth rate of 30 percent and reach 6.5 Exabytes of data per month in 2021, up from 1.7 Exabytes per month in 2016.This is complemented by the increasing usage of virtual assistants which allows you to control your home devices, manage your appointments automatically without any manual intervention in a first towards achieving a truly connected world.Adding to that, a growing start-up ecosystem will be the major beneficiary of 5G, leading to the creation of new markets and increase the connected devices market multifold. From an industry standpoint, this is the perfect recipe for a billion-dollar connected devices industry, which will add significant value to the Indian gross domestic product. Hence, a high level of preparedness, both by government and private companies is required to completely tap into this billion-dollar opportunity. The Government of India in a bid to hasten the process,has set up a high level committee on 5G to chalk out a plan for its roll out and remove any teething issues that may arise.Winning the 5G race--vital business cases that will make a difference5G is not just a standard that supplements existing networks. It is a gamechanger, offering immense potential for businesses. For me, the most interesting statistic is that it will generate a staggering $ 12.3 trillion economic output globally by 2035. Fifteen years after its proposed rollout, 5G's contribution to global GDP will equal that of India's GDP. This is the best `design ready platform' for the IoT (Internet of Things) and by extension, the IoE (Internet of Things). From a technical point of view, the standout features of 5G are the ability to keep billions of devices connected at the same time--all at blistering speeds of 10Gbps, with the lowest latency of 1 millisecond. And, in my opinion, the time is ripe for service providers and stakeholders to build business cases. Machines ­ the bigger direct beneficiaries of 5GMachines will offer more business opportunities to service providers than humans because of 5G. While the speed and network capacity will undoubtedly add to the experience of users, the bigger beneficiaries are machines. This has got to do with the low latency of 1 millisecond. Most of the prototypes and technology demonstrators of new products have not been able to realize the full potential of their concepts because lag takes away the magic of solutions. And 5G, because of its unified architecture, will be able to seamlessly integrate products of various access technologies into a single network. My take on how machines present business use cases for 5G. IN MY OPINIONI
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