Hopes of finally using their 5G enabled smartphones in India, which dimmed over the weeks and months of the year, have brightened as we wind down on 2021. The federal government has announced a list of 13 cities that would get 5G services over the next 12 months.
In an official statement, the government said India had developed an indigenous 5G testbed project, funded by the department of telecommunications, And that now the project was in its final stages of fruition, with a target completion date set for the last day of 2021.
As for the cities that could be getting 5G services in 2022, the list contains the top four metropolitan locations of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. In addition, the country's software capital Bangalore and upcoming tech city Hyderabad are also on the list. The others include Jamnagar, Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Pune, Chandigarh and Gurugram.
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India's tryst with 5G presented a Hobson's Choice for customers during 2021 where they had the handsets powered towards the technology while the upgrade from 4G service just did not happen. We have documented the issues that caused the delay and even resulted in a feeling that maybe India could sidestep 5G for 6G services.
The official statement said Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Jio had set up 5G trials sites in all thirteen cities and confirmed that these large cities would be the first where 5G services would be launched next year. However, it appears certain that the rollout will happen only in the latter part of 2022, given that the spectrum auction itself is slated for the second quarter of the year.
The official statement, which presented an annual update from the department of Telecommunication (DoT) listed out government initiatives such as BharatNet that is installing mobile towers in areas perceived as a threat to national security. It also claimed that foreign investment in the sector grew 150% between 2014-2021 from Rs.62,386 crore between 2002-2014 to Rs.1,55,353 crore in the next seven years.
The statement said the department had empowered eight implementing agencies such as the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Madras, and Kanpur, the Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore), and others to work on the 5G testbed for the past 36 months.
The total project cost the exchequer Rs.224 crore and would pave the way for end-to-end testing of 5G user equipment and network equipment by 5G stakeholders who have developed products, services and use cases. The testbed would enable the development, testing and proliferation of the new technology across cross-sectoral use cases and set up the foundation of 6G technology landscape, the statement said.
The statement also noted that the department had constituted a special group to co-create and participate in the development of 6G technology ecosystem. This is being done through enhanced participation of stakeholders to create capability options, use case scenarios and development standards for the upgrade.
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