The Government of India has approved 13 applications to participate in the 5G trials in India that will start soon.
Earlier the Government said that they have received 20 applications from the telecom operators to participate in the 5G trials.
Out of these 20 applications, 7 are from Bharti Airtel, 5 from Reliance Jio, 6 from Vodafone-Idea, and 1 each from BSNL and MTNL. However, now an ET report confirms, the Government of India has approved 13 applications.
The Government has kept all the Chinese Vendors like ZTE and Huawei out of the 5G trials in India.
The selected operators will soon conduct the trials in the airwaves that fall in the 700 Mhz band.
Also, the government has strictly told the chosen operators not to conduct these trials commercially. Any operators violating the norms will face serious consequences.
Let’s talk about the operators who are selected for participating in the 5G trials.
BSNL has partnered with C-DOT to participate in the 5G trials.
Airtel and Jio have chosen Nokia and Ericsson as their partners to participate in the 5G trial.
Vodafone-Idea, on the other hand, has chosen US-based Mavenir as their partner to help in the 5G trial.
Those of you who don’t know, Mavenir is an OpenRAN technology provider and has also earlier participated in the 4G trails in India with several operators.
At the time of writing this article, no operator has choosed Samsung as their partner to participate in the 5G trial in India. However, earlier, Jio planned to participate with Samsung in the 5G trial but haven’t listed its name yet.
The government has also asked all the selected Telecom operators to pay special attention to the network in rural and urban areas.