Introduction
India faces a massive rural-urban digital divide with only 25% rural broadband penetration. This article does a detailed technical and cost analysis comparing 5G vs WiFi networks for providing affordable high-speed broadband in rural areas.
The Need for Rural Connectivity
65% of India’s population comprising over 850 million people live in rural areas. However, lack of fixed broadband infrastructure and inadequate mobile network capacity has deprived rural citizens of digital access. Reliable, high-speed broadband has become essential for digital governance, banking, education, telemedicine and to drive overall socio-economic growth. Bridging the rural digital divide is imperative for Digital India.
Estimating Rural Bandwidth Requirements
As per a detailed study by ICRIER, the estimated total rural broadband demand by 2023-24 will be:
- 14 million wired subscribers needing ~2.1 million fiber km network reach
- 550 million mobile users generating ~7000 petabytes per month traffic
This massive capacity is driven by increasing video consumption, e-services usage and digital transformation. For a sample village like Shantipuram with 5000 people and 2000 broadband subscribers, the estimated capacity needed is:
- Average daily data usage per user: 1.5 GB
- Average access speed required: 15 Mbps
- Total data usage per day: 1.5GB x 2000 users = 3000 GB
- Total speed needed: 15Mbps x 2000 users = 30 Gbps
Evaluating 5G Deploying extensive 5G coverage across over 600,000 villages in India would require massive investments by telcos.
- 5G spectrum in India currently limited to 50 MHz per operator in 3.5 GHz band and 26 GHz.
- Realistic speed enabled is ~100 Mbps per 5G small cell site.
- For 30 Gbps capacity needed in our sample village, around 300 5G small cell sites would be required entailing very high costs. This is as per the calculations for full usage by only 2000 users, to be realistic we will consider only 15 micro-sites and not 300.
5G Small Cell Costs:
- 5G small cell cost including backhaul: Rs 25-30 lakhs
- 15 sites to cover 5km village: Rs 4.5 crores
Challenges:
- Significant fiber backhaul investment needed – upto Rs 30 lakhs per site
- Congestion issues likely at peak usage times
Leveraging WiFi Mesh Networks
WiFi 6 allows upto 1.2 Gbps per access point. Rural WiFi mesh networks are quick and economical to deploy by leveraging existing infrastructure.
- WiFi access points only cost ~Rs 10,000 per unit.
- 60 access points sufficient to cover 5km village for 30 Gbps capacity.
- Total cost just Rs 6 lakhs + Bandwidth charges compared to Rs 4.5 crores for 5G small cells.
Benefits:
- Uses low-cost routers, village rooftops and poles for access points.
- Localized access minimizes interference and congestion.
- Suitable for high indoor usage patterns.
Conclusions
For rural broadband connectivity, WiFi mesh networks are at least 75 times more cost-effective than 5G small cells as per this technical analysis. Not only cheaper, it also provides congestion free network and smooth indoor coverage. India must aggressively expand rural WiFi coverage through the PM-WANI and BharatNet initiatives to provide affordable access and bridge the digital divide.
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