5G services will be rolling out in several cities and metros in the country in 2022, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) announced on Monday, December 27. In a statement, the DoT said that 5G trial sites have been established in several cities by Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Jio. DoT had earlier said that 5G technology is expected to deliver 10 times better download speeds than 4G and up to three times greater spectrum efficiency.
The release also said that the indigenous 5G Test Bed project, funded by the DoT, has reached final stages and is likely to be completed by December 31, 2021. The project will provide an open 5G test bed that will enable Indian academia and industry to validate their products, prototypes and algorithms, and demonstrate various services.
> 5G services will roll out first in Gurugram, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Delhi, Jamnagar, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Pune and Gandhi Nagar. These are the locations where telecom operators have established 5G trial sites.
> 5G spectrum auctions have to be held as well. In its statement, the DoT said that in September 2021 it sought recommendations from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for the 5G spectrum auction and various modalities such as reserve price, band plan, block size and quantum of spectrum to be auctioned.
It added that the reference asked for conditions of auctions in 526-698 MHZ,700 MHZ, 800 MHZ, 900 T MHZ, 1800 MHZ, 2100 MHZ, 2300 MHZ, 2500 MHZ, 3300-3670 MHZ and 24.25-28.5 GHZ bands for 5G public as well as private 5G networks, for meeting the spectrum requirements of the industry. “Process of assignment of frequencies to TSPs (telecom service providers) would be initiated at the earliest possible,” it added.
> All three major private telecom companies have been conducting trials. The DoT had granted permission for six-month trials to the companies with telecom gear makers Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and C-DOT. In June, Jio claimed to have recorded a peak speed of 1 Gbps and Airtel is also said to have recorded the same level of peak speed in July. Reliance Jio is using its own technology as well for the 5G trials. All the private players are providing 4G services across the country at present and are gearing up for 5G services.
> 5G Test Bed: The DoT said that the indigenous 5G test bed project funded by it has reached the final stages. The eight implementing agencies – IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur, IISC Bangalore, SAMEER and CEWiT – have been working over a period of 36 months.
“Costing about Rs 224 crore, 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/Usecases, including indigenous start-ups, SMEs, academia and industry in the country,” DoT said.
> A 6G ‘Technology Innovation Group’ or TIG has been constituted by the DoT with the aim to co-create and participate in the development of the 6G technology ecosystem through increased participation in capability description, standards development at global standard setting bodies. 6G TIG comprises members from the government, academia, industry associations and the Telecom Standards Development Society of India (TSDSI).
With PTI inputs