Vodafone Idea Limited (Vi) has opposed Reliance Jio’s suggestion to phase out 2G networks in the country through a regulatory mandate. According to Vi, any forceful shutdown of 2G would move low-income and marginal consumers away from accessing basic telecom services, thereby increasing the digital divide.
In its counter-comment to a consultation paper issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) titled ‘Digital Transformation through 5G Ecosystem’, Vi said that there is a larger public interest which is being fulfilled through the continuation of such older technologies. Any decision to shut down older technologies must be taken after keeping in mind the interest of consumers, as is being done in the case of 3G.
Vi added that there are a huge number of consumers who are using 2G networks, despite having extensive 4G coverage available. The primary reason can be attributed to the cost of migration from feature phones to smartphones as the consumers using 2G networks would largely be in the lower income bracket.
According to Vi, a forceful shutdown of 2G will also affect point of sales (PoS) and internet of things (loT) devices such as ATMs, which run on the 2G network, and in certain cases, it may not be even able to change the equipment to be capable to latch onto 4G network. Such a scenario can have severe consequences as the availability of various services is dependent upon loT devices and 2G networks.
In its submission to TRAI’s consultation paper, Jio had suggested that the government should come out with a policy and glide path for shutting down 2G and 3G networks completely so that unnecessary network costs could be avoided, and all customers can be migrated to 4G and 5G services. Jio argued that the same will also give great impetus to develop the ecosystem for 5G use cases.
