5G Services to Unveil in India’s Selected Cities in 2022
The Department of Telecom has allocated spectrum to Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, Vodafone Idea and MTNL for 5G trials. Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and Mavenir also engaged in the trials.
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has reported that the 5G telecom services are set to be rolled out in selected cities in India in 2022.
The cities which are set to get the 5G telecom services in 2022 include Gurugram, Bangalore, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Delhi, Jamnagar, Ahmadabad, Chennai, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Pune, and Gandhinagar.
“These Metros and big cities would be the first places for the launch of 5G services in the country, next year,” the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said.
Apart from the leading telecom operators and smartphone manufacturers, the government is also involved actively to facilitate the rollout of 5G services. The Department of Telecom has roped in leading research institutions for the development and testing of 5G technology.
Earlier this month, Telecom Secretary K Rajaraman expressed hope that the 5G testbed would be rolled out in early January. “We hope to roll out this 5G testbed in early January which will enable SMEs and other parts of industries to come and test their solution on a working platform,” Rajaraman said at India Mobile Congress on December 9.
The Indigenous 5G Testbed project started in 2018 and is set to be completed by December 31, 2021. The project has been funded by the Department of Telecom. The department has spent Rs224 crore on this project.
“Costing ₹224 crores, the project is likely to be completed by December 31, 2021, paving the way for end-to-end testing of 5G User Equipments (UEs) and network equipment by 5G stakeholders developing 5G products/services/use cases, including indigenous start-ups, SMEs, Academia and Industry in the country,” the Department of Telecom said.
The Department of Telecom has allocated spectrum to Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, Vodafone Idea and MTNL for 5G trials. Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and Mavenir also engaged in the trials.
“Process of assignment of frequencies to TSPs would be initiated at the earliest possible,” DoT said.
The indigenous 5G testbed, a visionary technology development project initiated in telecom space, will enable development, testing and proliferation of 5G technology system components, cross-sectoral use cases, besides setting up the foundation for the development of the “6G Technology landscape” in the country, it added.
Eight agencies – Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur, Indian Institute of Science (IISC) Bangalore, Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering & Research (SAMEER) and Centre of Excellence in Wireless Technology (CEWiT) – are involved in the research project called ‘Indigenous 5G Testbed project’.
