Roll-out of 5G services in India

Leading telecom service providers are set to roll out the Fifth Generation or 5G telecom services across selected cities in India in 2022.

Key Facts

• 5G telecom services will be rolled out in cities like Gurugram, Bangalore, Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Chandigarh, Ahmadabad, Jamnagar, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Lucknow, and Gandhinagar.
• Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio have established 5G trials sites across the mentioned cities.

What is 5G?

• The fifth generation (5G service) is the latest upgrade to long-term evolution (LTE) mobile broadband networks.
• It is designed to connect many types of devices than smartphones. It offers far higher speed and capacity.
• 5G works in 3 bands namely low, mid, and high-frequency spectrum.
• In low band spectrum, speed is limited to 100 Mbps (Megabits per second).
• Mid-band spectrum offers higher speeds as compared to low band. However, it has limitations of coverage area and penetration of signals.
• In High-band spectrum, speed goes to 20 Gbps (gigabits per second).

Indigenous 5G Test bed project

• This project has been launched with the active participation of government.
• Department of Telecom has collaborated with the leading research institutions to develop and test 5G technology.
• Research institutes that are taking part in the project incluce:

1. Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay
2. IIT Delhi
3. IIT Hyderabad
4. IIT Madras
5. IIT Kanpur
6. Indian Institute of Science (IISC) Bangalore
7. Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering & Research (SAMEER)
8. Centre of Excellence in Wireless Technology (CEWiT)

• This project was started in 2018 and will be completed by December 31, 2021.
• It has been funded by the Department of Telecom. So far, Rs 224 crore have been spent on this project.
• The test bed will help in development, testing and proliferation of 5G technology system components and cross-sectoral use cases.
• It will also set up the foundation for developing “6G Technology landscape” in India.

What is Test bed?

Test bed refers to creating a specific environment to test the products or services. It comprises of hardware, software, operating system, as well as network configuration.

Month: Current Affairs - December, 2021