JOIN USHuawei not named among 5G trials participants in India
Moving a step closer to 5-G mobile networks, the government on Tuesday granted approval to conduct trials of the technology in the country but kept out Chinese vendors out of the venture.
“The Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Government of India, approved today, permissions to Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) for conducting trials for use and applications of 5G technology,” an official statement said.
Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio Infocomm, Vodafone-Idea and MTNL had applied for 5-G trials in India.
“These TSPs have tied up with original equipment manufacturers and technology providers which are Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and C-DOT,” the statement said adding that Reliance JioInfocomm will also be conducting trials using its own indigenous technology.
Following the border tensions with China, India had banned more than 200 Chinese apps and amended rules for procurement of telecom equipment from that country. China’s Huawei and ZTE are the leading telecom equipment suppliers.
Each telecom service provider has been asked to conduct trials in rural and semi-urban setting in addition to urban area to ensure that the benefits of the technology reach across the nook and cranny of the country.
“The duration of the trials, at present, is for a period of six months. This includes a time period of two months for procurement and setting up of the equipment,” the statement said.
The DOT has specified that the trials will be isolated and not connected with the existing networks of the service providers and on a non-commercial basis.
The objectives of the trials include testing 5G spectrum propagation characteristics especially in the Indian context; model tuning and evaluation of chosen equipment and vendors; testing of indigenous technology; testing of applications (such as tele-medicine, tele-education, augmented/ virtual reality, drone-based agricultural monitoring); and to test 5G phones and devices.
5-G technology is expected to deliver 10 time faster data download rates than that of 4-G, up to three times greater spectrum efficiency, and ultra low latency.
Applications are across a wide range of sectors such as agriculture, education, health, transport, traffic management, smart cities, smart homes, and multiple applications of IOT (Internet of Things).
“The service providers are encouraged to conduct trials using 5Gi technology in addition to the already known 5G Technology,” the statement said.
The 5Gi technology, developed by IIT Madras, Centre of Excellence in Wireless Technology (CEWiT) and IIT Hyderabad, facilitates much larger reach of the 5-G towers and Radio networks.