India will not lag the rest of the world when it comes to launching fifth-generation telecommunication services, 5G. The ministry of telecommunications and the telecom industry are working to get the sector ready. Yet, that is not enough. The success of 5G will depend on how other parts of the economy make use of it. For the most part, they have no clue. Further, they have no clarity on how the legal ecosystem would support their use of 5G. The government must start work now to create the enabling legal and financial environment industry would need to take advantage of 5G. 5G is not faster mobile data than happens in 4G. There are two other parts to it. Ultra-reliable, low-latency communications form one part; massive machine-type communications, the other. These two set a new paradigm. Latency, in computing jargon, is the gap between instruction and commencement of communication. Zero, or near-zero, latency communications rendered in a very reliable fashion would allow things like remote surgery by robots in rural areas, carried out by doctors in towns. That would spell a big advance in healthcare. This is a use-case that is widely recognised. But if something goes wrong with the surgery, how would insurance apportion blame amongst the parties involved in surgery execution, the robot and its sensors, software, communications and the doctor? Unless the answer to the question is clear by the time 5G is rolled out, no remote surgeries would take place. How would the huge data generated by the Internet of Things, along with the rest, be carried, stored and processed securely? Should sharing of fibre-optic infrastructure be mandated and not just left to commercial contract? How can Indian industry be incentivised to show the ambition to manufacture 5G gear? The government has already moved on some of these things. But it needs to move on all, for 5G to be a viable reality. Countries that get their 5G act together will develop commercial and strategic advantage, especially with artificial intelligence. India cannot afford to lag.