India and 5G - What's Happening?

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What is India's Position in 5G?

Will India be able to lead in 5G?

How does it impact you and your data?

The 5G?

5G is meant by the 5th Generation.  5G network is the latest generation of wireless technology. Experts believe that the 5G network will be the next frontier of the digital revolution. 5G is a new global wireless standard after 1G, 2G, 3G, and 4G networks. 5G can offer speeds up to 20Gbps but in the commercial world, 5G carriers are expected to support speeds up to 1Gbps which is 10x the speeds offered by the current 4G LTE networks. The faster data transmission is also accompanied by lower latency. Compared to 4G, which was limited to a ping of 50ms, 5G can theoretically go as low as 1ms! Commercially, one can expect a latency of around 10ms from the 5G carriers.

5G - The New Era

What is India's Position in 5G?

When will 5G be available in India? Is indeed the most demanded question that twines over the mind of tech-savvies. There are so many participants in the Indian race of bringing 5G home, Jio, Airtel, or VI. However, India’s biggest telecom service provider JIO claims that it has created a 5G solution for India that will use all Made-In-India tools and technologies. Across the globe, Google is all set to release a brand-new 5G variant of the earlier launched Google Pixel 4A, Release date in India has not been released yet.

Will India able to lead the world in 5G?

In a conversation with a News Outlet, Ericsson CEO mentioned India's case of 5G.

" India can play a pivotal role in developing new 5G use cases, applications, and business models that global markets can leverage, says Borje Ekholm, president, and CEO at Ericsson. He says despite consolidation, the Swedish equipment maker is benefiting from the surge in data traffic and users that can help the market become bigger than it is today. "

The very first step required for the launch of 5G in India would be the auction of spectrum for 5G i.e. radiofrequency auction among the various Mobile Network vendors in India.

The 5G committee of the telecom ministry has said about 6,000 Mhz of spectrum can be made available without delay for the next-generation mobile service.

The panel has spotted spectrum for 5G services across 11 bands, of which four bands -- premium 700 Mhz band, 3.5 gigahertz (GHz), 24 GHz, and 28 GHz band -- can be made immediately available for the service.

This was the forecast last year Dec 2018. But as of Feb 2019, there has been a delay in the auction.

The telecom department’s delay in auctioning 5G spectrum in the 3300-3600 Mhz bands will jack up costs for phone companies planning to roll out 5G networks in India as they will have to make additional investments in such next-generation airwaves, the sector regulator said in a white paper on the ultra-fast wireless broadband technology.

Another challenge for moving to 5G is that the telecom regulator has warned that the likely traffic growth, particularly in 4G and 5G networks “would be difficult to manage through existing microwave back-hauls,” and suggested making “millimeter wave spectrum available” to address the problem.

The 3.5 GHz band is likely to be the first to be used globally for 5G deployments, and since DoT is yet to auction spectrum in the 3300-3600 Mhz bands, telecom service providers in India are likely to initially incur an additional investment while launching 5G services on account of spectrum cost," Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said in its 5G white paper.

The DoT is reportedly likely to hold the next spectrum auction only after August this year and may use a new pricing methodology, which the regulator is working on, to lower prices of all airwave bands, even in the upcoming sale.

So going by the speculations in the auction of spectrum nothing will start till the spectrum auction starts and going by the delays it may be 2021–2022 when we can have a commercial 5G network available to the end-users.

What are India's Tech giants doing on 5G?

Reliance Jio 5G launch has been published officially at IMC 2020, making the corporation the first telecom to publish plans for the next-gen network in the country. Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani uncovered his plans for the Jio 5G launch date in India during his inaugural dissertation at a virtual edition of India Mobile Congress IMC 2020 on Tuesday, confirmed that it will be launching 5G mobile services in India in the second half of 2021. 
“I assure you that Jio will pioneer the 5G revolution in India in the second half of 2021,” announced Ambani. This is the first case wherein an Indian telecom corporation has fortified its timelines for the 5G release date in India.

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