"Rollout In 2030, A Sensing Network": Sunil Mittal To NDTV On 6G

It's 2026. Four years from now, in 2030, India will be ready to roll out 6G, telecom czar Sunil Bharti Mittal told NDTV on its flagship Walk The Talk show. 

Mittal, the founder of Bharti Airtel, India's second-largest telecom service provider, says that India's 6G race will depend on its ability to monetise existing 5G networks.

6G, the sixth generation cellular network that would operate in untapped radio frequencies and use cognitive technologies like AI to enable communication multiple times faster than the existing 5G network, is expected to be significantly faster, and have lower latency.

"I think 6G conversation has started. Sometimes too, I would say for the telecom operators too soon because you have not even monetised your massive investments of spectrum and capital investment of a lakhs of crores or more on 5G. Spectrum alone was a lakhs of crores. Networks are probably lakh and a half crores by now and continuously being invested," Mittal, who started out selling bicycle components in Ludhiana, told NDTV's Editor-in-Chief and CEO Rahul Kanwal.  

The telecom leader then explained what 6G will look like. 

"6G will be a sensing network. You will not probably carry your phones. You may carry it like your iPad or a laptop or an additional device, but you will carry it on a daily basis. Your glasses, your ring, your earpods, they all will be sensing who are you meeting, who are you talking to, you want to translate your languages, real time will happen. If you see the Meta Ray Ban glass, that's the early sample of what's coming. And everything will be sensing what you're doing, what the world is doing, your AI agents will be doing. 100X of human beings on a network. All that," he said.

The business tycoon underlined that India has the most affordable telecom services anywhere in the world. 

"Today you raise your hand anywhere in the country, you get a 5G signal. I mean, we are significantly ahead of Europe, the US and many advanced countries in providing a high quality radio signal," he said.

"Lowest pack at 200 bucks today, you pay about seven or eight rupees a day to get everything banking services, health records, DBT, UPI. Watching your videos, your YouTube, your Instagram, your everything. In one phone for 10, 12 bucks a day, who's complaining? In fact, the people who can afford to pay 2000 rupees are also paying 500 rupees," he said.

"Tomorrow, when 6G comes, there should be investments available in the bank. You fragment the spectrum, you fragment balance sheets, you fragment financial viability, you get nothing. And that's why many of the European countries are suffering," he said.