5G offers phenomenal opportunity for market to leapfrog: Cisco official

American singer Keri Hilson linked the COVID-19 outbreak with China's rollout of 5G network in November 2019. Hilson, who has 4.2 million followers on Twitter posted several tweets where she said: "People have been trying to warn us about 5G for YEARS. Petitions, organizations, studies...what we're going thru is the affects [sic] of radiation. 5G launched in CHINA. Nov 1, 2019. People dropped dead." Many eerie theories on similar lines followed, alleging COVID-19 was indeed planned to depopulate the world. There is so far no research that proves a link between 5G airwaves and the novel coronavirus. In fact, a report by CNET debunked this theory. (Source: Moneycontrol)

Next-generation 5G presents a phenomenal opportunity to "leapfrog", and insatiable demand for bandwidth, new industrial use cases and enterprise market needs would provide filip for service providers to invest in 5G networks, a senior Cisco official said on Wednesday.

India's digital transformation has multiple levers at play including need for bandwidth, newer use cases for industries, infrastructure required to build 5G ecosystem, and data centre amongst others, Anand Bhaskar, managing director, service providers, Cisco India and SAARC said.

"5G presents a phenomenal opportunity for us to leapfrog," he said addressing a virtual session at India Mobile Congress 2020.

He further said studies have shown that almost 10-12 per cent of Indian mobile subscribers can afford 5G services, with a sizable increase in average revenue per user (ARPU).

"...So that is good news...of a billion mobile subscribers, if over 100 million people can afford a 5G service, that is a huge latent market for telecom service providers to cash on," he said.