The high-speed 5G services are expected to be rolled out in about a month, Minister of State for Telecom Devusinh Chauhan said.
Addressing the inaugural event of the International Telecommunication Union’s Regional Standardization Forum (RSF) for Asia and Oceania region, Chauhan said India is likely to deploy indigenously developed and manufactured 5G telecom gears by end of this year for 5G services.
India’s biggest ever auction of telecom spectrum that concluded on August 1 (Monday) received a record Rs 1.5 lakh crore of bids, with Mukesh Ambani’s Jio cornering nearly half of all the airwaves sold with an Rs 88,078 crore bid.
The minister said that the growth in the Indian telecom market has been spurred by the market-friendly policies of the Modi Government.
“We initiated a number of structural and procedural reforms in the telecom sector.
“As a result, a recent 5G spectrum auction in India has fetched bids of $20 billion (Rs 1.5 lakh crore),” Chauhan said.
HIGHLIGHTS
Major telecom operators like Reliance Jio, Airtel, and Vi (formerly Vodafone-idea) are already working on hardware to roll out their 5G services in the country. Telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw previously said that 5G services will be rolled out to everyone by the end of the year. Now a new report coming from The Hindu BusinessLine reveals that PM Narendra Modi will officially launch the 5G network at the inauguration of the India Mobile Congress (IMC) on September 29.
The Indian government hasn’t officially announced the launch date of 5G yet, but the telecom minister said that the rollout would happen sometime around the month of October. This goes in line with the timeline of the IMC event. So, it could be possible that the PM will officially announce the launch of 5G services later next month.
The government recently completed the 5G spectrum auction and is already in the process of approval and allocation of the spectrum to telecom networks that bid. India’s spectrum auction for 5G has been valued at 1.5 lakh crores. In addition to the three major telecom giants Reliance Jio, Airtel, and Vi — Adani Data Network also joined the auction this time.
Bharti Airtel has already said that it will start deploying the 5G network in India by the end of August and announced partnerships with tech companies like — Samsung, Nokia, and Ericsson. On the other hand, other reports suggest that Reliance will also unveil its 5G on 75th Independence Day (August 15).
In the first phase, 5G services will roll out in 13 cities including — Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Gandhinagar, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Jamnagar, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, and Pune.