In a few days, India is going to take one of its first steps into a bright future.
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will be chairing an inter-ministerial meeting on June 17 where the list of 5G spectrum bands to be deployed in the country will be finalised
This list will then be officially unveiled at the International Telecom Union's World Radiocommunication Conference in October in Egypt. In order to finalise the list, representatives from the DoT, ISRO, Doordarshan, defence ministry and Airports Authority of India (AAI) will weigh in on 5G rollouts, alongside telcos and chipmakers.
- The DoT has recommended to TRAI that the base prices of the new spectrum be raised higher than previous auctions. The idea is to bolster revenue from the telecom industry in order to have a cash supply for times of need.
- Previous spectrum bands were sold with 20-years licenses that have now expired. As such, there's more of it up for grabs, and thus place for more competing firms to partake.
- Previously, prices were suggested for the 5G bands at Rs 492 crore per unit, back in August. There's no clarity yet on how much more the bands may cost now. Those higher prices are liable to keep firms from purchasing bands, if they think it's too expensive, but then again the fact that everyone can get a piece of the pie might also convince them to dive in. It could go either way.
- In a 5G spectrum auction in Germany, the country raised 6.6 billion euros, or about Rs 52 thousand crore. If we're likely, we could raise a similar amount here too.
- The list will likely include the 600 MHz, 1.4 GHz, 2.6 GHz, 4.8 GHz, 26 GHz, 31GHz, 47 GHz and the E&V bands. That last one usually includes those in the 71 to 86 GHz and 57 to 71 GHz bands
- The India meeting will see experts consult on which bands can be globally supported and therefore pitched at the Egypt conference. There, the International Telecom Union will decide on which airwaves bands to globally assign for 5G networks.
- 5G has a very specific definition, meaning a connection has a list of requirements to qualify. For one, it needs to offer 1 to 10 Gbps connections to end points in the field. This also needs to be with a maximum ping of one millisecond, and offering 1000x bandwidth per unit area.
- Additionally, 5G can't be some awesome network capability that only some people get. It's also expected to have 99.999 percent availability (or at least the perception of it) and 100 percent coverage.
- The main aim however, is for 5G to be both as fast as or faster than current wired and wireless Internet networks, but also more widespread and efficient with energy usage to make it worthwhile to set up.
- What that means is, if implemented correctly, 5G should give you starkly better speeds and coverage than current 4G offerings, as well the ability to support tens of thousands of connections in an area without too much slowdown.
- Based on tests by various companies, that should translate to 10x faster download speeds and latency reduced by 20x. So everything from your browsing, to your Netflix, to your smart devices should be much faster.
- As far as actually getting 5G, we first need to set up the infrastructure, which will eventually be up to the various competing telcos. Before that happens though, they need hardware.
- However, companies like Huawei, and Ericsson are yet to conduct trials of 5G in the field. After that happens 5G rollouts will start around the world in countries like South Korea, Japan, and US first, and only from 2020 onwards. So at best, we can expect 5G in India at the earliest in 2021.
- When it arrives however, 5G will change how a lot of business and industries function. For one thing, smart cars will find processing and linking to each other much easier to do with 5G. That means self-driving cars, automated public transport, and more.
- Healthcare could also become much more accessible, especially in poor and isolated villages. Doctors will be able to conduct remote surgeries in real time, bringing the best healthcare to every part of the country.
- Smart cities will go from a pipe dream to an actual possibility, thanks to all the IoT devices the new 5G standard will be able to support.
Now it's just a matter of waiting to see how long it takes for all of this to come to fruition.