5G services launched in India by PM Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday, October 1 launched 5G telephony services that promise to offer ultra-high speed internet. Speaking at the launch event at the India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2022, PM Modi said that India was dependent on foreign countries for 2G, 3G, 4G but with 5G, the country is creating history. From Rs 300 per 1 GB data, India now has 1 GB data for Rs 10, PM Modi said. 

The Prime Minister also inaugurated the India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2022 exhibition ahead of the formal launch of 5G mobile telephony services in India. After inaugurating the exhibition at Pragati Maidan in Delhi, he went around pavilions set up by different telecom operators and technology providers to get a first-hand experience of what 5G can do. He started with Reliance Jio's stalls, where he witnessed the 'True 5G' devices displayed and experienced the use case through Jio Glass, a ‘smart glass’ aimed at making the virtual space more interactive using 3D avatars, holographic content and other features. 

Flanked by Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and billionaires Mukesh Ambani of Reliance, Sunil Bharti Mittal of Bharti Airtel and Kumar Mangalam Birla of Vodafone Idea, he spent time understanding the indigenous development of end-to-end 5G technology. He thereafter visited stalls of Airtel, Vodafone Idea, C-DOT and others.

According to an official release, 5G will be launched by the Prime Minister in select cities on Saturday and it will progressively cover the entire country over the next couple of  years. The cumulative economic impact of 5G on India is estimated to reach USD 450 billion by 2035. Capable of supporting ultra-high-speed internet, the fifth generation or 5G service is expected to unleash new economic opportunities and societal benefits, serving as a transformational force for Indian society.

The three major telecom operators of the country were scheduled to demonstrate one use case each in front of the Prime Minister to show the potential of 5G technology in India. Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio will connect a teacher from a school in Mumbai with students in three different locations in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Odisha, the release said. This, according to official sources, will demonstrate how 5G will facilitate education by bringing teachers closer to students. 

In the Airtel demo, a girl from Uttar Pradesh will witness a lively and immersive education experience to learn about the solar system with the help of virtual reality and augmented reality, the release said. The Vodafone Idea test case will demonstrate the safety of workers in an under-construction tunnel of Delhi Metro through the creation of a 'digital twin' of the tunnel on the dais, tol help give safety alerts to workers in real-time from a remote location, it said. 

The various use cases that were scheduled to be demonstrated in front of the Prime Minister in the exhibition include precision drone-based farming; high-security routers and AI-based cyber threat detection platforms; automated guided vehicles; smart ambulances; augmented reality/virtual reality /mix reality in education and skill development; sewage monitoring system; smart-agri programme and health diagnostics, among others. 5G offers speed multiple times faster than 4G, supports lag-free connectivity, and can enable billions of connected devices to share data in real-time.

"5G can unleash new economic opportunities and societal benefits giving it the potential for being a transformational force for Indian society. It will help the country leapfrog the traditional barriers to development, spur innovations by startups and business enterprises as well as advance the 'Digital India' vision," the official release said.

India's biggest ever auction of telecom spectrum held recently had received a record Rs 1.5 lakh crore of bids, with Mukesh Ambani's Jio cornering nearly half of all the airwaves sold with a Rs 88,078-crore bid. Telecom tycoon Sunil Bharti Mittal's Bharti Airtel made a successful bid of Rs 43,084 crore, while Vodafone Idea Ltd bought spectrum for Rs 18,799 crore. Gautam Adani's group, whose entry in the auction was billed by some as another flashpoint in the rivalry with Ambani, paid Rs 212 crore for 400 MHz. Adani group bought spectrum in the 26 GHz band, which is suitable for setting up a private network for end-to-end communication.

The auction aggregated the demand for a robust 5G ecosystem that can cater to its use cases involving IoT (Internet of Things), M2M (Machine-to-Machine communication), AI (Artificial Intelligence), Edge Computing, and robotics. The Telecom Department has amended Right of Way (RoW) Rules in August 2022, wherein the charges for permissions to lay cables and set up towers have been made reasonable and a ceiling has been fixed for rates for installation of 5G small cells and optical fibre cable on street furniture.

The Department of Telecom has set up a 5G testbed with the help of IITs, IISc Bengaluru and SAMEER to develop technology in 2018. A 5G hackathon was commenced in 2020 to trigger ideation and prototyping of use-cases by startups and has led to spurring innovative products, the official release said. An inter-ministerial committee on 5G use cases has been functioning since 2021, in coordination with 12 central ministries, enabling the setting up of 5G use-case labs. Consultations with industry have been held enabling the 5G ecosystem to make handsets available.

C-DOT is also developing a 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) in collaboration with local industry and startups. It has already tested 4G Core in collaboration with TCS and Tejas Networks successfully. "All these will help in answering the Prime Minister's clarion call on 'Jai Anusandhan'. All these efforts are game-changers for India's manufacturing and Telecom ecosystem leading to domestic 5G enterprise carrier grade stacks as well as innovative impactful 5G use-cases," the release said.

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