The Department of Telecommunication has given a green signal to the 5G trials requested by the network providers.
Major network service providers like Reliance Jio and Airtel are planning on rolling out 5G in India by the later part of 2021 and will conduct trials within 2-3 months in certain areas by the permission of the DoT(Department of Telecommunication).
According to reports, the parliamentary committee on IT was too eager to sanction the request and also asked the DoT, which has informed the committee about receiving as many as sixteen applications by Jan 2020, why the trials didn’t commence earlier.
However, the commencement of allocating a 5g spectrum to service providers is a matter of concern. But this time it should be less intricate as there are only a handful of providers. Thankfully, due to dynamic spectrum sharing, the network providers can use some of their existing 4G bands for 5G purposes.
According to reports by the parliamentary panel, this issue is in complete contradiction to what the DoT had informed the committee during the examination of Demands for Grants(2020-21) in February 2020, that the government has allowed the commencement of field trials for 5G for India specific trial cases by the TSPs (Telecom Service Providers) in a limited area and in limited time.
Reportedly, 5G trials in areas such as education, agriculture, health care, and public safety will be given top priority. The 5G use Case lab developed by the IDRBT(Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology) got a green light from the Department and other cases from AIIMS, Ministry of Health, and Ministry of Housing and Urban Development are in talks with the DoT.
Amidst all these, Airtel recently became the first telecom service provider in India to conduct live demonstration in Hyderabad and claims to be 5G ready and is waiting for the government to allocate spectrum. Airtel also promised to start 5G services in India by September 2021.
With the 5G technology customers can download heavy data content. 5G is predicted to make the backbone of emerging technologies like the web of Things (IoT) and machine to machine communications, thereby supporting a way larger range of applications and services, including driverless vehicles, tele-surgery and data analytics.
The ultra low latency offered by 5G makes the technology desirable for such use cases. Latency is that the amount of your time data takes to travel between its source and destination. consistent with a report published by the government, 5G is predicted to make a cumulative economic impact of 1 trillion dollars by 2035 in India.
A coin has two sides. Similarly, the impact on the environment can not be neglected. The main component of 5G which is most dangerous for the ecosystem is the millimeter waves, which are being used in wide scale for 5G purpose. According to several reports, with increase in the use of these waves the lives of birds are getting affected.