Vodafone Concept opposes Jio’s proposal for sundown date for 2G networks

Vodafone Concept has countered Reliance Jio’s request to the telecommunications regulator for a sundown date or timeline for shutting down 2G networks. Reliance Jio, which entered into the telecommunications with 4G has a purely 4G and 5G community, in contrast to Vodafone Concept and Airtel who’ve subscribers on their 2G community predating the 4G period. 

Responding to a session paper floated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Reliance Jio had stated that the federal government ought to come out with a coverage for closing down the 2G and 3G networks fully in order that pointless community prices may very well be averted and all clients could be migrated to 4G and 5G providers. In line with Reliance Jio, this may also give nice impetus to creating ecosystem to 5G use instances. 

‘Improve in digital divide’

In counter feedback for a similar session paper, Vi characterised these feedback by Jio to be rhetoric in nature that ignore the numerous influence on present clients from the community shutdown.

“Any forceful shutdown via regulatory mandate, will result in low earnings and marginal customers being compelled out of accessing the essential telecom providers, thus growing the digital divide,” Vi stated in its counter feedback. 

In line with Vi, the market itself is deciding the optimum course of the speed at which older community applied sciences are shut down. For example 3G networks are being shut down regularly in a number of circles, within the newest quarterly name, Vi talked about that it is going to be switching off its 3G community by the tip of FY25. 

‘Antagonistic influence’

The identical can’t be stated for the 2G community as each Airtel and Vodafone Concept proceed to have a big subscriber base on the 2G community. All of it boils all the way down to affordability of smartphones since most smartphone OEMs haven’t been capable of carry a very inexpensive machine for the poorest of the poor. 

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Reliance Jio has made a number of makes an attempt to rectify this problem since 2016, with the launch of the Jio Cellphone. Not too long ago it launched a brand new iteration of the telephone, nevertheless solely time will inform if it is going to have a major influence on prompting the 2G subscriber base to transition out of the previous tech. 

Vi additional stated that regulatory mandate to transition out of previous community applied sciences can have an antagonistic influence on the IoT ecosystem as nicely. “Any obligatory migration in direction of newer expertise will influence PoS and loT gadgets like ATMs, and so forth. as in sure instances, it is probably not even capable of change the tools to be succesful to latch onto 4G community. Any forceful shutdown can have extreme penalties as availability of assorted providers depends upon loT gadgets and 2G networks,” it added.