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In the Absence of Apple’s Official Repair Program, India Needs Higher Standards
New Delhi [India], June 24: Apple products are worth keeping. The problem is, keeping them has never been cheap.
Per Apple’s own repair pricing page (support.apple.com/iphone/repair), out-of-warranty screen replacements can reach $379 for newer Pro Max models – climbing further when damage is classified as “other,” pushing replacement costs toward $549. Battery service alone runs up to $119. For many users, this math quietly tips the decision toward buying a new device rather than fixing the one they have. A UK survey found that 30% of consumers discarded phones primarily because they couldn’t afford the repair. The UN’s Global E-Waste Monitor 2024 identified limited repair options as a core driver behind a widening gap – in 2022, a record 62 billion kilograms of e-waste was generated globally, while only 22.3% was formally recycled.
Apple has acknowledged this. In its 2024 whitepaper Longevity by Design, the company noted that out-of-warranty service rates dropped 38% between 2015 and 2022, and that hundreds of millions of iPhones older than five years remain in active use. In April 2024, Apple announced that customers and independent repair providers could use genuine used Apple parts, with on-device calibration replacing the earlier serial-number requirement. To support this further, Apple launched its Self-Service Repair program – currently available in 34 countries across North America and Europe. India is still not among them.
That absence matters. As Apple’s footprint in India grows, so does the gap between the complexity its devices demand and the expertise available to service them. Apple’s ecosystem is tightly integrated – every component, from biometric sensors to display assemblies, calibrated to communicate with the others. The Cato Institute’s 2024 analysis of Right to Repair legislation noted that improper repair “can result in the disabling of security features, making devices vulnerable to data theft.” Apple’s own support documentation warns that non-genuine replacement displays “may have compromised visual quality and may fail to work correctly.” As repair shops across Indian cities have multiplied to meet growing demand, the expertise required to run them has not kept pace.
This is the problem HelloRE (https://hellore.in) was built to close. “Apple has built an ecosystem where every component communicates with the others,” said Arbaz Husain, Founder and CEO of HelloRE. “When a repair disrupts that communication – through incompatible parts, undertrained technicians, or a lack of diagnostic rigour – the device may continue to operate, but not necessarily as originally intended.”
In a market that Apple’s own programs have yet to reach, that distinction is everything.
References used:
- Apple iPhone repair pricing: https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair
- Apple Longevity by Design whitepaper (2024): https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/apple-longevity-by-design.pdf
- Apple self-service repair announcement (April 2024): https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/04/apple-to-expand-repair-options-with-support-for-used-genuine-parts/
- Apple official support on non-genuine parts: https://support.apple.com/
- UN Global E-Waste Monitor 2024: https://ewastemonitor.info/the-global-e-waste-monitor-2024/
- Cato Institute – Right to Repair analysis (Spring 2024): https://www.cato.org/regulation/spring-2024/criticism-right-repair-laws
- UK consumer repair survey: https://earth.org/apple-is-joining-the-right-to-repair-movement/
- Bengaluru’s SP Road market featured in US Notorious Markets List for counterfeit goods:
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National
India Opens the Airwaves to Save Lives: Gazette Notification Enables V2X Communication on 5.9 GHz Spectrum
New Delhi [India], June 25: India has de-licensed 30 MHz of spectrum in the 5875–5905 MHz band for Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication, a regulatory milestone that positions the country alongside the EU, US, Japan, and South Korea in advancing connected mobility infrastructure.
NEW DELHI — on a morning that will be remembered in the annals of Indian transport policy, the Government of India published a Gazette Notification that does something deceptively simple: it opens a frequency. But the consequences of that act are anything but simple. For the first time, vehicles on Indian roads will be able to communicate with each other, with roadside infrastructure, with traffic systems in real time, without a license, and without delay. The 5.9 GHz band (5875–5905 MHz), long the domain of technical working groups and consultation papers, is now the operating frequency of India’s road safety future.
India’s road fatality numbers have resisted every conventional intervention. Nearly 1.7 lakh lives are lost annually, a toll that amounts to one death approximately every three minutes, every day, across the length and breadth of the country. Successive governments have legislated, invested, and campaigned. Yet the roads have remained stubbornly lethal. V2X technology, cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems that enable On Board Units (OBUs) to exchange safety-critical data with Roadside Units (RSUs) and other vehicles represents a categorically different intervention. Studies across mature V2X deployments globally indicate that the technology can prevent up to 80 percent of crashes involving unimpaired drivers. The Gazette Notification de-licensing this spectrum is, at its core, a decision to introduce that capability to Indian roads at scale.
The mechanics of the notification are precise. By de-licensing 30 MHz for V2V communication within the 5.9 GHz band, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), in coordination with the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH), removes the single largest deployment barrier that has held back cooperative ITS in India: the requirement for individual spectrum licenses. Device manufacturers, automotive OEMs, ITS solution providers, and highway operators can now build, certify, and deploy V2X-enabled equipment with full regulatory certainty. The road to scale across the National Highway network managed by NHAI and beyond is now clear.
The geopolitical and industrial significance of this alignment cannot be overstated. The European Union mandated 5.9 GHz harmonization for ITS years ago. The United States, Japan, and South Korea followed with their own frameworks. India’s notification signals to global automakers, technology companies, and multilateral bodies that it is not a follower in this space it is an active participant shaping the connected mobility ecosystem of the world’s most populous nation. For V2X device standards bodies such as BIS and TEC, and for regulators at DoT, this is both a mandate and a moment.
Twelve months of deliberate groundwork made this moment possible. Structured advocacy, technical submissions, stakeholder roundtables, and inter-ministerial consultations built the groundwork, with ITS India Forum, India’s national Intelligent Transportation Systems think tank playing a consistent role in engaging DoT, MoRTH, TRAI, and the broader road transport establishment. Drawing on global benchmarks, domestic safety data, and operational evidence from C-V2X pilot deployments, the case was singular and evidence-based: de-licensing this spectrum would save Indian lives.
About ITS India Forum
ITS India Forum is India’s national think tank for Intelligent Transportation Systems and smart mobility, headquartered in New Delhi. The Forum engages with policymakers, industry, academia, and civil society to accelerate the adoption of technology-driven solutions for safer, smarter, and more sustainable transport across India.
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