In Budget 2022, Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said that 5G in 2022 and BharatNet broadband will be ready by 2025. Apart from this, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing the nation on the 75th Independence Day, had said that 5G services are going to start in India soon.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch 5G internet service in India at the India Mobile Congress 2022 (IMC) event to be held in Delhi for the sixth time from October 1, 2022 to October 4, 2022.
In the first phase, 5G services will be available in 13 metropolitan cities of India, including Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Gurugram, Ahmedabad, Pune, Chennai, Jamnagar, Chandigarh, Kolkata, Gandhinagar, and Lucknow.
The government has instructed telecom companies to keep the prices of 5G as low as possible so that 5G services can reach more and more people in India.
Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnav said that “A 5G lab has been developed at IIT-Madras and with the launch Indian government aims to have 5G coverage in almost every corner across India in 2 years”.
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The 5G spectrum auction was India’s biggest ever spectrum auction. India’s telecom service provider participated in the 2022 spectrum auction conducted by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Government of India.
Jio, India’s largest telecom service provider with more than 420 million subscribers, bought a total of 26772 megahertz (MHz) spectrum by investing Rs 88078 crore, which includes frequency bands like 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 1800 MHz, 3300 MHz, and 26 GHz. Jio has a 1,000 MHz band in the mmWave band (26 GHz) in each of the 22 circles.
At the company’s 45th Annual General Meeting (AGM), Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani said Reliance’s wholly owned subsidiary Jio will launch 5G services for its customers in several major cities including Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata in the next two months.
Reliance further said that the company will launch an ultra-affordable budget 5G smartphone in collaboration with Google for which the company has planned $ 25 billion.
Airtel bought a total of 19867 megahertz (MHz) spectrum by investing Rs 43084 crore. Airtel’s main focus was on the 3300 megahertz (MHz) and 26 GHz bands.
Vodafone Idea Limited invested a total of Rs 18784 crore and took mid band 5G spectrum in 3300 MHz band in its 17 priority circles and mmWave 5G spectrum in 26 GHz band in 16 circles.
Adani Group took the 400 megahertz (MHz) band by investing Rs 212 crore. Adani Group will use 5G internet service for its business i.e. private use. Recently Adani Group acquired a 29.18% stake in NDTV and made an open offer for an additional 26% acquisition.
According to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) data, India had 1173.66 million telephone subscribers at the end of July 2022, including 1148.03 million for wireless and 25.63 million for wireline.
The share of urban subscribers is 55.42% of which 54.59% are wireless and 92.31% are wireline subscribers. The share of rural subscribers is 44.58%, of which 45.41% are wireless and 7.69% are wireline subscribers, according to TRAI.
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