Two and a half years after acquiring the spectrum at auction, the Indian conglomerate has yet to make use of its airwaves
Reports this week suggest that Adani Group is considering surrendering it 5G mmWave spectrum after failing to turn its dream of deploying private 5G networks into reality.
According to the reports, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has sent multiple requests to the company asking how it intends to use the currently idle spectrum, as well as penalising it for failing to meet minimum rollout targets.
Adani Group purchased the spectrum for $27 million at India’s first 5G auction back in 2022. At the time, Adani said it would use the 400MHz of 26GH (also known as mmWave) spectrum to deploy private 5G networks for its own digital subsidiaries, as well as offering it to enterprise and industrial customers.
As part of the deal, Adani was obligated to begin offering commercial services using the spectrum within a year.
“The Adani Group’s foray into the industrial 5G space will allow our portfolio companies to offer a set of new add on services that capitalises on all the other digital segments we are building,” said Gautam Adani, Chairman of the Adani Group, after acquiring the spectrum.
Adani Group’s participation in the spectrum auction initially caused concern in some corners of the Indian telecoms sector, with onlookers speculating that success with private networks could lead to Adani’s entry into the consumer mobile space.
The reality, however, appears to have been quite different, with Adani Group having failed to make a single deployment using the mmWave 5G spectrum.
Adani has reportedly told the DoT that the spectrum’s deployment across its own industrial operations – including ports, airports, power stations, and logistics – had proven commercially unviable.
If the company continues to fail to meet rollout obligations, the company will be forced to pay fines to the DoT. As such, Adani is considering returning the spectrum licences to the DoT.
It is also worth noting that Adani did not participate in India’s latest 5G spectrum auction, which took place in summer last year and generated a lukewarm response from the country’s mobile network operators. The acquisition of additional spectrum could have made the company’s private 5G network offering more attractive and would likely have allowed them to also offer 5G fixed wireless access services, for which mmWave spectrum is typically well suited.
Failures to meaningfully commercialise mmWave spectrum is nothing new for the mobile industry. While offering considerably lower latency and capacity than typical mid-band spectrum 5G services, mmWave’s shorter range limits often limits its viability and increases deployment costs.
Indeed, even in South Korea, typically viewed as one of the most advanced mobile markets in the world, the country’s mobile operators had failed to make mmWave commercially viable at scale. After four years of lacklustre deployments, all of the nation’s operators ultimately had their mmWave licences revoked by the government.Keep up to date with all the latest global telecoms news with the Total Telecom newsletter Adani Group’s ‘foray into industrial 5G’ is a complete failure
