5G to Roll Out in India in 2022 - These Cities to Get it at First

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) announces 5G internet services to be rolled out in India in 2022. According to a press release, 13 cities across India will get 5G at first. The 13 cities are Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Gandhinagar, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Jamnagar, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, and Pune.

However, the government did not confirm which telecom operator would commercially implement 5G services. Nevertheless, the three leading telecoms operators, Jio, Airtel, and Vi (Vodafone Idea), have already established test sites in these 13 cities.

DoT eight has partnered with eight agencies for the indigenous 5G testbed project (/ topic / 5g), which started in 2018 and will be completed by December 31, 2021. These agencies are the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, IIT Bombay, IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad, Indian Institute of Science (IISC) Bangalore, Society for Microwave Applied Electronics Engineering and Research (SAMEER), and Center of Excellence in Wireless Technology (CEWiT).

"Costing Rs 224 crore, the project is likely to be completed by December 31, 2021, paving the way for end-to-end testing of 5G (/topic/5g) User Equipments (UEs) and network equipment by 5G (/topic/5g) stakeholders developing 5G (/topic/5g) products/services/use cases, including indigenous start-ups, SMEs, Academia and Industry in the country," DoT said.

DoT also shared, in September 2021, a reference was sent to TRAI, seeking recommendations for the auction of spectrum identified for International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) / 5G regarding reserve price, band plan, block size, amount of spectrum to be auctioned and auction conditions in 526-698 MHZ, 700 MHZ, 800 MHZ, 900 MHZ, 1800 MHZ, 2100 MHZ, 2300 MHZ, 2500 MHZ, 3300-3670 MHZ and 24.25-28.5 GHZ for public 5G as well as 5G networks to meet the spectrum requirements of industry captive 5G applications (Industry 4.0). The process of assigning frequencies to the TSPs would start as soon as possible.