A month after a Union minister requested that all telecom service providers get ready for the service's launch, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will announce 5G services in India at the India Mobile Congress on October 1.
Next month, the Prime Minister will open a four-day conference where top telecom providers including Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea will outline their 5G plans for the nation.
According to a source, "the 5G services will launch in India at the India Mobile Congress on October 1."
The department of telecommunications (DoT) and the cellular operators association of India jointly organise the India Mobile Congress (IMC), one of the major telecom, media, and technology events in Asia (COAI)
This announcement comes about a month after Reliance Industries Ltd. announced it would invest 2 lakh crore to build out its 5G services in important cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata by Diwali and throughout India by December next year.
“Within the next two months, by Diwali, we will launch Jio 5G across multiple key cities, including the metropolises of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai. By December 2023, which is less than 18 months from today, we will deliver Jio 5G to every town, every taluka, and every tehsil of our country,” Ambani told shareholders on August 29 at the company's annual general meeting.
By March 2024, Bharti Airtel, a competitor of Reliance, intends to roll out its 5G services in 5,000 cities and towns.
“By December, we should have coverage in key metros. After that, we will expand rapidly to cover the entire country,” the second-largest telecom operator's CEO, Gopal Vittal, stated earlier this month that after that, the company would quickly grow to serve the entire nation.
Even though Vodafone Idea purchased spectrum in 17 circles across the nation during the auction month, it has not yet made any announcements regarding its plans for 5G services.
The government's airwave auction saw Ambani's Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd emerge as the biggest buyer, spending Rs. 88,078 crores, more than twice as much as Bharti Airtel Ltd, which came in second.
By selling 51,236MHz of the spectrum at the week-long auction, Ambani's acquisitions assisted the government in earning a record-breaking 1.5 lakh crore. Wireless operators purchased 71 per cent of the available airwaves in the 72,098MHz band, including 5G spectrum, with the sale of spectrum in the 3.3GHz band generating the highest revenue of 80,590 crores. A total of 39,270 crores, 14,709 crore, and 10,376 crores were generated from the sale of airwaves in the 700MHz, 26GHz, and 1,800MHz bands, respectively.
“We understand that the spectrum purchased is good enough for covering the entire country. So, there’s good reason to believe that in the coming two to three years, we’ll have very good coverage of 5G in the entire country,” according to telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw's remarks following the auction.
Vaishnaw expressed hope that 5G network rollouts would start by October.
