Billionaire Mukesh Ambani on Wednesday pitched for India making the rollout of 5G or the fifth-generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks as a national priority to support the digital revolution.

Speaking at the India Mobile Congress, he said India must complete the migration from 2G to 4G and 5G at the earliest.

“To keep millions of Indians at the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid confined to 2G is to deprive them of the benefits of the digital revolution,” Ambani said.

Ambani, whose firm Reliance Jio in 2016 ushered in the revolution in cheaper mobile data and connectivity, said the rollout of 5G should be India’s national priority, PTI and Reuters reported from New Delhi.

“At Jio, we are currently focused on 4G and 5G execution, and broadband infrastructure expansion,” Ambani said.

His comments come a week after a top Indian Government official said that India is planning to auction 5G airwaves early next year.

As part of its technology push, Jio has also developed a homegrown 5G solution.

Dwelling on the price-sensitive market that India is considered to be, Ambani said, “We should not lose sight of the fact that affordability has been a critical driver of the phenomenally rapid expansion of the mobile subscriber base in India. India should move towards greater digital inclusion, and not greater digital exclusion.”

Also, fibre connectivity should be completed across India on a mission mode, said Ambani, who is the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries Ltd.

“Fibre has almost unlimited data carriage capacity. Therefore, to be future-ready, India has to be fibre-ready. Even during these Covid times, Jio was able to introduce Fibre to Home to 5 million homes. If all the players in the industry work together, we can rapidly achieve a nationwide footprint of fibre, just as we reached mobile telephony to every corner of the country in the last decade,” Ambani pointed out.

Jio, which counts Alphabet’s Google, Facebook, Qualcomm  and Intel among its backers, is confident of being the first to launch 5G services in India, Ambani had said previously.

Mittal Says Simplify Regulations To Reduce Litigation: Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal, the telecom billionaire, urged the government to simplify regulations so litigation in the sector can be reduced while welcoming the telecom reforms in the country where the industry now was poised in collaboration with the government to provide the latest and cutting edge technologies to the country at large.

“I would request the government to lower the temperature of the industry when it comes to litigation. Old cases need to be settled and the new cases need to be avoided through light touch regulation,” Mittal said at the India Mobile Congress explaining that this would increase a lot of energy in the telecom sector, PTI reported.

“We must have a regime, which is simple in its regulatory touch and does not create more litigations, going forward. This will release the energy of the industry,” he said.

Mittal flagged the high duties in the sector and said the spectrum continues to be expensive. He urged the government to look into these outstanding issues.

“Spectrum remains expensive. So, some of these areas also I would appeal to the government to continuously look at for the benefit of our digital dream,” the telecom industry veteran said.

Mittal also asserted that although the industry competes in the market, there is a need to collaborate in various areas, such as towers and fibre.

“We need to start to talk to each other to co-build, like the world is doing…share more tower infrastructure…while we fiercely compete, we also collaborate and lower the cost structures for serving the most affordable tariffs anywhere in the world,” Mittal said.