New Delhi: The government has formed a high-level forum to guide India to start 5G service by 2020, a technology that will deliver wireless broadband speed of about 10,000 mbps in urban areas and 1,000 mbps in rural belts, Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha said on Tuesday.
In a bid to facilitate research and development activities for 5G service rollout, the government is looking at setting up a Rs 500-crore support fund.
"We have created a high-level 5G forum that will work on vision mission and goals of 5G service in the country. When the world will roll out 5G in 2020, I believe India will be at par with them," Sinha said.
The telecom minister announced setting up of a high-level group '5G India 2020 forum' which will be steered by Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan, IT secretary Ajay Kumar Sawhney and Department of Science and Technology Secretary Ashutosh Sharma, along with experts in the tech fields. Sinha said the country missed an opportunity to have its say in 3G and 4G technologies but now the government wants India to contribute actively in developing 5G standards and products.
"We will make efforts to develop globally competitive products and manufacture them here with a target of getting 50 per cent of India market and 10 per cent of global market over next 5-7 years," Sinha said.
Under the 5G technology, the government aims to deliver about 10,000 megabit per second (10 gbps) in urban areas and 1,000 mbps (1 gbps) in rural areas, he said.
The data transfer in 5G technology has latency or gap of 1 millisecond (ms) compared to 30 ms in case of 4G technology.
It can be used for controlling and operating critical devices in the field of medical, self driving cars etc.
"I feel this is a ripe time when India should come forward and take a leap in new technologies. My ministry has initiated it to move ahead with collaborative approach. Earlier efforts were being made in silos," Sinha said.
The government is working on creating a corpus of Rs 500 crore to fund 5G activity, mainly on research and product development, officials said.
As per the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) data, Reliance Jio is providing average 4G speed of around 18 mbps on its network.
The minister said Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development believes that 5G deployment will help increase the GDP of the country and generate employment opportunities. "The development of 5G technology ecosystem and creation of standards in India will help save payments that Indian companies make at present for using patents of foreign companies," a ministry official said.
Airtel deploys Massive MIMO ... India's first 5G-capable tech
New Delhi: India's largest telecommunications service provider, Bharti Airtel "Airtel", on Tuesday announced the deployment of India's first state-of-the-art Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) technology which is a key enabler for 5G networks. As one of the few commercial deployment of Massive MIMO globally, the deployment puts India on the world map of technology advancement and digital revolution. Airtel is starting with the first round of deployment in Bangalore & Kolkata and will expand to other parts of the country soon.
Deployed as part of Airtel's ongoing network transformation program, Project Leap, the Massive MIMO technology will expand existing network capacity by five to seven times using the existing spectrum, thereby improving spectral efficiency.
Customers will now be able to experience two to three times superfast speeds on the existing 4G network. Data speeds will now also be seamless, offering enhanced user experience even indoors, in crowded places and high rise buildings. It would enable multiple users and multiple devices to work simultaneously without facing any congestion or experience issues especially at hotspot locations.
Massive MIMO is a key enabler and foundation for technology revolutions to come.
India Mobile Congress to span out as global event: Centre
New Delhi: Telecom minister Manoj Sinha on Tuesday said the Department of Telecom will organise the India Mobile Congress every year which would emerge as a global event in coming years. "We want to organise India Mobile Congress every year. We expect that it will emerge as a global event in years to come," Sinha said. The country is hosting the India Mobile Congress for the first time which would provide a platform for mobile, internet and technology companies. About 150 foreign delegates and eight embassies including the US, Finland, Sweden, Israel are participating in the event. This a joint industry event with mobile handset body Indian Cellular Associations and IT industry body Nasscom. Many of mobile phone companies including Vivo, Oppo, Nokia, LG, Huawei will showcase their latest products. The event is open for public. They only need to register on IMC website.