The government should not make the same mistakes of not having standards and ecosystems in place, which they did in 5G rollout before launching 6G services in India, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said on Tuesday.

Even globally, telcos are getting low returns on investment (RoI) at just 3 per cent due to lack of monetisation for 5G.

“We are asking the government that it should start looking at applications while there are efforts in making standards and creating an ecosystem for 6G. We have to go to the grassroots industry...that is not happening, and that cannot be only for today, but has to be for the future. Some people have to sit down and think strategically about what is going to happen after 2030 when 6G is coming. This is what we want from them (government),” SP Kochhar, Director General, COAI, told reporters here.

He said the government’s expectations and aspirations to lead 6G are not necessary in terms of rollout, but to have a lot of patents and standards coming out of the country right now.

6G rollout

“As of now, the 6G experts are saying that the commercial rollouts will take place somewhere in 2030. Given the space, given the speed at which the RoIs are happening, and the speed of other connected sectors, which will rely on 6G, the date may shift a little bit,” Kochhar noted.

Meanwhile, arguing for structured regulatory framework for over-the-top (OTT) communication services, he said shift of messaging traffic from licenced telecom networks to OTT platforms are disrupting the economic balance and also vulnerabilities to national security.

He said international entities can collaborate with OTT platforms in other countries bypassing India’s telecom infrastructure for OTP and transactional messaging. Also, over the past decade, telcos have experienced a 94 per cent decline in revenue from SMS services and telcos are expected to lose over $3 billion in SMS business messaging revenue globally to OTT channels over the next few years.

Clean service

“Lakhs of fraudulent numbers have been suspended or disconnected. That is in the telecom space. There is a parallel stream — the OTT stream, which gives an outlet to the fraudsters to run their businesses from there. There is no check or balance. Therefore, they have a free run on spam and fraud calls and messages,” Kochhar said.

Therefore, messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Google Meet and Signal, among others, should be treated at par.

“Whether it is OTT or telecom, whatever services we are providing to the citizens, it should be clean services which do not have any chance of spam or fraud. Let the axe fall — whether it is telecom or OTT — it should be equally binding on both,” Kochhar added.

Published on March 11, 2025