The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has flagged off 5G trials in the country. This means the start of a 6-month testing phase for major Telecom Service Providers (TSPs), wherein they will be using and applying various 5G technologies.
The TSPs that have got approval for the 5G trials include Bharti Airtel, Reliance JioInfocomm, Vodafone Idea, and MTNL. These operators will be using the equipment and technology of Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, and C-DOT. Among the four TSPs, Reliance Jio has been also granted permission to conduct trials using its in-house technology.
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Interestingly, the DoT has not allowed Chinese vendors like Huawei and ZTE to take part in the process. Though there is no explicit mention of the restriction of Chinese firms in the official press release, experts have highlighted the matter.
Since the trial period is for 6 months, this also includes 2 months for procurement and setting up the equipment for implementation. The DoT has specifically mentioned that the TSPs have to cover both urban and rural areas of the country in the trials.
Also notably, the allocated spectrum includes bands like the mid-band (3.2 GHz to 3.67 GHz), Sub-6 Gigahertz band (700 GHz), and the millimeter-wave band (24.25 GHz to 28.5 GHz). The TSPs can use their own existing bands as well for trials.
As per the DoT official press release, the objectives of the 5G trials are – “Propagation characteristics especially in the Indian context; model tuning and evaluation of chosen equipment and vendors; testing of indigenous technology; testing of applications (such as telemedicine, tele-education, augmented/ virtual reality, drone-based agricultural monitoring, etc.), and to test 5G phones and devices.”
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So if everything works as planned, the 5G reality shouldn’t be that far. And when it happens, we could see up to 10 times faster data download rates than the current 4G connections. It will also offer up to three times greater spectrum efficiency and ultra-low latency. All of these shall enable Industry 4.0 and open new opportunities across the board. But again, let’s not get ahead of ourselves and wait for how things proceed hereafter.
