Nearly a third (32%) of enterprises in India said they would prefer to obtain airwaves from another company instead of directly purchasing spectrum from the government for the fifth-generation (5G)-backed services, a Deloitte India finding revealed.

“32 per cent of Indian enterprises said they would prefer to license spectrum from another company instead of purchasing spectrum directly from the government/regulatory body,” London-based consulting firm in a study said.

20 per cent of respondents were interested in spectrum sharing if they get dedicated rights.

Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is yet to come up with a roadmap for the 5G spectrum auction while the next-generation technology promises to offer multiple use cases for large enterprises across industries.

Globally telecom regulators have set aside a portion of the spectrum for fifth-generation or 5G networks (for instance, a portion of the 3.5GHz range) to enable local enterprises in building their own private 5G networks but, according to the new finding, India is likely to go for a combination of both public and private 5G slice instead of solely relying on private 5G.

“The ongoing pandemic has urged Indian enterprises to increase investments in next-generation wireless technologies,” it said and added that enterprises here are banking on newer technologies for improved security and better customer interactions.

Indian executives expect to leverage telco-enabled 5G slices as they believe utilising services through a wireless provider is preferable to acquiring spectrum directly through the government/regulatory body or holding exclusive rights on a dedicated or shared spectrum.

5G, according to the report, is a priority technology for 80 per cent of Indian enterprises along with Wi-Fi 6 (73%), and Narrow Band-IoT (NB-IoT)/LPWA (63%).

Further, a majority of Indian executives (98%) believe 5G and/or Wi-Fi 6 will transform their business in the next five years, while 88 per cent believe that the transformation will occur in the next three years.

Interestingly, Wi-Fi 6 is preferred by 55 per cent of executives for indoor use cases and 5G is preferred by 53 per cent of executives for outdoor use cases.

However, despite the promising data, 45 per cent of Indian enterprises believe cybersecurity along with system compatibility (39%), lack of spectrum availability (37%), and immature next-generation technologies (35%) are some inhibiting factors that need to be addressed in public 5G service adoption