Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnav on Thursday said that the much-awaited rollout of high-speed 5G services in India will begin from October this year. “Telecom companies are busy creating infrastructure and 5G services should be started by October and then it should be increased at a very fast pace,” he told the news agency.
According to India’s 5G spectrum auction data, Reliance Jio emerged as the highest bidder; After that, there is Bharti Airtel. This clearly means that both these operators will be at the forefront of providing the fastest internet in the country.
While the process of providing 5G services will be done in a phased manner, a similar step has been seen earlier during the 4G rollout as well. 5G services will first be provided on a pilot basis in select cities and will be expanded to other areas later.
According to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), these 13 selected cities are Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Gandhinagar, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Jamnagar, Kolkata, Chennai, Lucknow, Pune, Delhi, and Mumbai.
The minister also said that high-speed 5G services will be available in most parts of the country at “affordable” prices in two-three years.
Sources said the DoT has received advance payments of around Rs 17,876 crore from Airtel, Jio, Adani Data Network and Vodafone Idea for the spectrum won in the recently held auctions.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his Independence Day speech, spoke on 5G and said that the service will provide 10 times faster speed and will be launched in India soon. He further said that Indian villages will get optical fiber facilities and soon the internet will reach even the remotest part of the country.
In terms of speed, the thumb rule for 5G is 100 Mbps, though it can vary. The broad consensus for 4G is that it is in the range of 60-70 Mbps.
In addition to high-speed data, 5G has the potential to enable a number of enterprise-level solutions such as machine-to-machine communications, connected vehicles, and more immersive augmented reality and metaverse experiences.
5G refers to the fifth generation of cellular technology.