Targeting 5G Rollout By 2020, Government Plans Rs 500-Crore Fund
Telecom Minister says India will take a lead in offering 5G services.
- High-level forum to guide India to start 5G service by 2020
- The government is looking at setting up a Rs 500-crore support fund
- Aimed to deliver about 10,000 megabit per second in urban areas and 1,000 mbps in rural areas.
The government has formed a high-level forum which will guide India to start 5G services by 2020, a technology that will deliver wireless broadband speed of about 10,000 mbps in urban areas and 1,000 mbps in rural belts, Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha said on Tuesday.
“We have created a high-level 5G forum that will work on vision mission and goals of 5G service in the country. When the world will roll out 5G in 2020, I believe India will be at par with them,” Sinha said. In a bid to facilitate research and development activities for the 5G service rollout, the Centre is also looking to set up a Rs 500-crore support fund.
The ‘5G India 2020’ forum will be steered by Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan, IT secretary Ajay Kumar Sawhney and Department of Science and Technology Secretary Ashutosh Sharma, along with experts in the field.
Sinha said the country missed an opportunity to have its say in 3G and 4G technologies but now the government wants India to contribute actively in developing 5G standards and products.
We will make efforts to develop globally competitive products and manufacture them here with a target of getting 50 percent of Indian market and 10 percent of global market over next 5-7 years.Manoj Sinha, Telecom Minister
With 5G technology the government aims to deliver about 10,000 megabit per second (10 gbps) in urban areas and 1,000 mbps (1 gbps) in rural areas, he said. The data transfer in 5G technology has latency or gap of just one millisecond (ms) compared to 30 ms in case of 4G technology.
"I feel this is a ripe time when India should come forward and take a leap in new technologies. My ministry has initiated it to move ahead with collaborative approach. Earlier efforts were being made in silos," Sinha said.
The government is working on creating a corpus of Rs 500 crore to fund 5G activity, mainly on research and product development, officials said.
The minister said Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development believes that 5G deployment will help increase the GDP of the country and generate employment opportunities.
The development of 5G technology ecosystem and creation of standards in India will help save payments that Indian companies make at present for using patents of foreign companies.Telecom Ministry Official
The government, academia and industry will jointly work to create an enabling environment for manufacturing of 5G chipsets in the country and help Indian firms generate patents in the area. The 5G standards are expected to be finalised by the International Telecommunication Union next year.