PM Modi launches 5G services in India; Airtel says it launched services in 8 cities

Modi inaugurated the event and launched 5G in select cities

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday launched the 5G mobile services, which promises more high-speed internet than existing 4G services, and insisted that India will play a big role in designing the future wireless technology, and manufacturing related to it.

As the PM launched the 5G services at the Indian Mobile Congress event, Bharti Airtel announced that it rolled out 5G services in eight cities on Saturday, including Delhi, Mumbai, Varanasi and Bengaluru. With this, Airtel has become the first company to launch 5G services in the country.

Reliance Jio said it would launch its services in four metros this month by Diwali, while Vodafone Idea Ltd said it would also launch services soon but did not announce the timeline.

5G services will progressively cover the entire country over the next couple of years -- Jio promises to do that by December 2023 and Bharti Airtel by March 2024.

Also Read | Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune: Top cities where 5G will be available

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. The 5G service expects to revolutionise sectors from healthcare, education, agriculture and disaster monitoring.

Both Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio promised that the 5G services will be affordable compared to the rest of the world.

Addressing that gathering, the PM urged the telecom industry leaders to visit the schools and colleges of the country and unleash every aspect of this new technology.

While asking the industry to create an enabling ecosystem for MSMEs to prepare spare parts for electronic manufacturing, the PM said. “5G technology should be used to bring about a revolution in the country.”

"Today, 130 crore Indians are getting a wonderful gift in the form of 5G from the country and from the telecom industry of the country."

Modi said while the nation was dependent on foreign countries for technology for 2G, 3G and 4G telecom services, India has created history with indigenous technology playing a major role in 5G.

The Prime Minister said his government's vision for 'Digital India' has led to mobile manufacturing units in India increased from just two in 2014 to over 200 now, bringing down the cost of handsets. The country, he said, is shipping phones overseas worth crores of rupees as against zero exports a few years back.

He also said internet users have increased to 80 crores from 6 crores in 2014. From less than 100 panchayats in 2014 now 1.7 lakh panchayats are connected by optical fiber.

He said India now has the world's lowest data charges, as tariffs fell from a high of Rs 300 per 1 GB of data in 2014 to just Rs 10 per GB. Going by the average consumption of 14 GB of data per month, the data cost has come down from Rs 4,200 to Rs 125-150, he said.

Taking a dig at the previous Congress-led UPA government, he said these things were possible because of the right intentions of his government.

"This is the difference between the intentions during the 2G era and 5G era now," he said in reference to the alleged 2G spectrum allocation scam.

Addressing the gathering Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani promised affordable 5G services.While assuring to cover 5G services every town, every taluka, and every tehsil by December 2023, he said that 5G services will be launched by Diwali in key cities.

Airtel Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said Airtel's 5G service will be available in eight cities from Saturday. Airtel will roll out 5G services in several cities across the country by March 2023 and across India by March 2024.

Separately, an Airtel official insisted that at present 5G services will be available at existing 4G rates and a new tariff for 5G will be announced after some time.