India's private telecom operators — Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, and Vodafone Idea — have identified high device costs as the primary barrier to large-scale deployment of 5G RedCap (Reduced Capability) IoT technology, despite its strong potential across industrial and commercial applications.
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Software-Driven, But Not Cost-Free
Speaking at the ETTelecom 5G Congress 2025, senior executives from the three telcos underscored that RedCap, while being a software-led evolution of 5G, still entails a device cost that makes several use cases commercially unviable at present.
According to the report, the telco executives believe that the availability of affordable devices in large economies such as China and India will propel the uptake of the technology.
"RedCap is essentially a software update. But that also involves a cost. So I feel the deployment will completely depend on whether the cost of the devices comes down to the level for use cases to become commercially viable," Siddharth Talawadekar, Vice President and Business Head (IoT) of Airtel Business was quoted as saying in the report. He added that mass adoption will likely be driven by markets such as China and India due to their scale and demand. "So it is a bit of a chicken and egg story currently."
Bharti Airtel, along with Ericsson and Qualcomm, conducted a pre-commercial RedCap trial on its 5G network in 2023, TelecomTalk previously reported.
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5G RedCap
RedCap is designed to support use cases that lie between high-end 5G applications and legacy LTE solutions. It offers comparable data rates to LTE with superior latency, energy efficiency, and spectrum utilisation, making it ideal for applications like 4K video surveillance, AR/VR headsets, inventory tracking, and Industry 4.0 environments.
Consumer Segment Still a Distant Bet
"So today, cost is one angle that is prohibiting the proliferation of this use case. However, RedCap is perfectly fit for industrial automation, dark factories (which operate without people), and video surveillance, among others," Mohan Raju, Vice President and Vertical Head (IoT), Reliance Jio, was quoted as saying.
Vodafone Idea's EVP, Gulshan Khurana, reportedly noted that while industrial use cases may drive RedCap adoption, the consumer segment will remain limited unless there is a shift in business economics. "Probably industrial demand will drive RedCap IoT, but the consumer segment not as much. I think the industrial requirements, the business dynamics, and the economics have to make sense for it to be practical."
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GSMA: Standalone 5G Architecture Is Crucial
Julian Gorman, Head of Asia Pacific at GSMA, emphasised that "5G standalone (SA) architecture will be crucial to enabling the RedCap IoT ecosystem. Moving the whole ecosystem along requires the industry to move to that standalone architecture, and that will be a big wave to push things through.
He reportedly added that RedCap IoT is still in the development stage, and has not attained commercial maturity yet. "We expect that in the next two to three years, the financial attractiveness of RedCap modules will take over, with the attractiveness of Cat and NB-IoT modules fading away. RedCap IoT will start to catch up as the more dominant technology in the next decade," Gorman was quoted as saying.
Also Read: Telecom Industry Seeks Additional Spectrum to Sustain 5G, IoT Growth: Report
Market Optimism Rises Despite Maturity Gaps
Despite the current challenges, industry leaders remain optimistic. "The number of devices on RedCap would be far higher than any other modules because they would be used by ordinary people. So a 7 billion population may use nearly 14 billion devices, and this figure could be higher in the next 10 years. This volume can be monetised in a very optimal way," Jio's Raju reportedly added.
He reportedly stated that, despite the challenges, the industry could potentially unlock significant value from RedCap IoT technology through the large volume of compatible devices.
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"At Counterpoint Research, we forecast that by 2030, almost 17 percent of the IoT module shipments will be on RedCap. Including the eRedCap, 25 percent of the module shipments will happen on these two technologies. In India, we are likely to see around 10 million shipments by 2030," Mohit Agrawal, Research Director (AI and IoT) at Counterpoint Research, who moderated the panel discussion, was quoted as saying.
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