Airtel, Jio, Vodafone Idea to seek more time for 5G trials
09 Jan 2020
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Field trials for 5G roll-out in India are likely to be delayed further as private telecom operators Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio Infocomm are seeking time beyond the 10 January deadline to submit proposals, say reports.
The companies say they need more time for furnishing all details sought by the telecom department and this will not be possible within the 10 January deadline.
“There is a lot of documentation and details required to be submitted to the telecom department, which is not possible by January 10,” a report in The Economic Times quoted an unidentified executive as saying.
The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) will write a letter to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) this week, said the executive.
Rajan Mathews, director general of COAI, which represents all private telcos, confirmed the development but said that a time frame for the extension to be sought from DoT had not been finalised yet.
“There are three scenarios – rural, semi-urban and urban areas – for which information and a proper plan needs to be submitted including information from each gear vendor and telecom operator. This information gathering will take time, which is why we are seeking an extension,” said Mathews.
The telecom department will allocate the trial spectrum to its licensees, telecom service providers, which can then choose to partner with vendors such as Nokia, Huawei, Ericsson and Samsung.
India will allocate airwaves to all telecom service providers for conducting trial runs of super-fast 5G networks and will not bar any equipment supplier or service provider from participating in the upcoming 5G technology trials, telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Monday
India’s 5G trials were first scheduled to take place early last year but got stuck on modalities such as pricing and trial tenure. On taking over as the telecom minister in June 2019, Ravi Shankar Prasad had said that his priority would be to start trials within 100 days, a deadline that also passed. Recently, telecom secretary Anshu Prakash said trials would be held in January 2020.
The government had, in 2017, constituted a high level committee with a mandate to develop a road map for the roll-out of fifth-generation telecom technology by 2020.
The high-level forum, comprising secretaries of ministries of communications, information technology, and science & technology, had been tasked with the job of helping domestic industry to reach out to global markets, and with countries across the world that launching similar forums, to join the 5G technologies race.
India is currently the second largest telecom market in the world with 1.2 billion consumers. Investment in the sector has increased 220 per cent in the last four years. Telecom creates four million direct and indirect jobs.
