Discuss how India's 5G rollout and the push to make telecom equipment in India can help bridge the digital divide. What challenges remain?

The digital divide is the gap between people who can use digital technology and people who cannot. A decade ago it made modern connectivity a privilege of those who could afford it [1]. 5G was launched from the India Mobile Congress stage in 2022 and now reaches every district [1]. Together with domestic telecom manufacturing, it is narrowing the gap, but the last mile is still unfinished.

5G rollout as a bridge

• Scale and speed: India has more than 5.5 lakh 5G base stations, and mobile internet is about 10× faster than in 2022 [1].
• Governance on the phone: Hundreds of services are now on mobile phones. DBT has sent about ₹50 lakh crore directly to beneficiaries [1].
• Education: DIKSHA logged over 500 crore learning sessions up to July 2022, reaching children in remote villages [1].
• Less travel: Citizens no longer need to visit distant banks, hospitals or block offices for routine services [1].

Make in India in telecom

• Affordability: Telecom reforms and making phones and network hardware in India made data and devices cheaper [1]. This lowers the cost of getting online for poor households.
• Industrial linkage: The IMC agenda of "Invest, Innovate, Make in India" ties connectivity to jobs and domestic capacity [1].
• Global voice: India hosted the GSMA Board meeting in 2026, which signals a growing role in telecom governance [1].

Challenges that remain

• District is not village: BharatNet's fibre was "service ready" in 2.19 lakh Gram Panchayats (96.70%), but only against a revised scope of 2.26 lakh. Work ran 2–6 years late, partly because Right of Way clearances were slow [2].
• Reliability: Fibre faults caused about 48% of network downtime, and the average repair took 17 days [2].
• Device gap: Only 85.5% of households own a smartphone, so roughly one in seven are left out of app-based services [3].
• Exclusion by design: MGNREGA wages were delayed by inactive Aadhaar and frozen bank accounts [4]. When the technology fails, the payment fails too.

5G and domestic manufacturing have largely solved the supply side of the divide: coverage and cost. The way forward is to:

• judge BharatNet by uptime and actual use, not just cable laid;
• speed up Right of Way clearances with the States;
• keep non-digital fallbacks for payments, as the Standing Committee urged [4].

Only then will connectivity serve Antyodaya and SDG 9.c, the goal of universal, affordable internet access.