DOT to come up 5G roadmap by June this year: Telecom Secretary

Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan today said that Department of Telecom is planning to come up a 5G roadmap by June this year.

She said that Government is already working with all stakeholders including the industry, academia and startup community, to become a frontrunner in the area of 5G.

The 5G technology evolution is expected to enable new services, connecting new industries, various forms of devices, and empower new user experiences, to support expanded connectivity needs for the next decade and beyond. We will soon see a transformation in the way we live due to 5G and I am glad that India is at the forefront of this change," she further said at COAI event.

In fact, Sundararajan earlier said that "The DoT has received good inputs on 5G in the new telecom policy or NTP 2018 which is yet to be unveiled. The draft of the NTP 2018 is in final stages and will be put in public soon." Adding that the telecom ministry has set up a high-level committee to work on 5G roadmap so that India gets access to the next generation technology when it is available for commercial roll-out globally."

She further said "In the 5G we are looking to do a lot of pilots. So when 5G hits, India will be a leading edge of technology as well as used cases."

The event was held a week after the plenary meetings in Chennai where the 3GPP executives met and made considerable progress towards finalizing the standards for Non-Stand Alone-New Radio (NSA-NR), which allows 5G deployments over existing 4G networks. The decisions on specifications and standardizations made at the plenary meetings are expected to go a long way in ensuring quick roll-out of 5G technology-based services across India and the world.

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"We are working to ensure that Indian customers will experience 5G along with rest of the world. The new standards finalized by 3GPP and this meeting of experts will enable Indian telcos to transition to new technologies while ensuring that the demands of various sectors are well met. COAI's 5G India Forum and IF3 will continue to work together as the efforts to make 5G specifications for delivery of services across sectors including automobiles, agriculture, logistics, medicine and health gain momentum and the Telecom Service Providers come closer to providing services across sectors which is vital to enable them to achieve Digital India," said Rajan S Mathews, Director General, COAI.