Earlier this month, we told you the Department of Telecom has approved 13 applications of the telecom providers in India to participate in 5G testing.
While DoT approved the application, it didn’t allocate the spectrum to the TSPs back then.
However, this Thursday, the Wireless Planning and Coordination wing of DoT has allocated 100, 800, and 10 units of experimental 5G airwaves in 3.6GHz, 26GHz band, and 700MHz bands to the three major telecom companies in India.
The three major telecom companies to whom the 5G airwaves units are allocated are Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea.
Just to remind as we told you earlier, the Government of India has kept out all the Chinese players such as Huawei and ZTE to participate in 5G trials in India.
In addition to the above airwaves, DoT has also allowed the telecom operators to conduct 5G trials on their own airwaves in 800MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz, 2500Mhz bands.
The telecom operators are allowed to start the 5G trials in the above defined airwaves from May 27 till the end of November this year.
When the telecom companies complete the trial, it will submit the trial data to the DoT after which the 5G spectrum auction will start that as per some reports happens next year.
The Department of Telecom (DoT) has asked the telecom operators to fairly conduct the trials both in Urban and Rural areas so that the deployment of the 5G network will not just be contracted to Urban areas.
Those of you who don’t know, Airtel and Jio already have tested their 5G applications in their own indegenous network. Vodafone-Idea has also done the same.
The allocated spectrum for conducting the 5G trials can be used both for voice and data services.
So, as I said above the trial is going to end in November and the auction is expected to start next year, then, we might avail the 5G service in our country from the end of next year or from the year 2023.
