What is the issue?
- The global roll-out of 5G commercial services is expected by 2020.
- India government is taking various measures for the sooner deployment of the technology.
What is 5G technology?
- 5G promises ultra-reliable, very fast speeds and high bandwidth mobile connectivity, which provides peak speeds of 20 times, compared with 4G.
- It is expected to provide 10-plus Gbps speeds, which allow access to high-bandwidth multimedia and data services for various industry applications.
- 5G is intended to support mission-critical applications such as financial transactions and healthcare, and latency and high speed will be achieved through the use of Fibre optic cables.
What are Prospects for 5G in India?
- High-speed broadband remains the top priority for telecom service providers, the government and the citizens alike.
- 5G will significantly contribute in transforming everyday lives of Indians by resolving real issues within e-healthcare, e-education, infrastructure and e-governance.
- This technology would entail accelerating the BharatNet programme for deploying connectivity infrastructures.
What are the measures taken by India in this regard?
- Bharat Net - BharatNet project was establish in 2017, to provide digital infrastructure on a non-discriminatory basis by an affordable broadband connectivity of 2 Mbps to 20 Mbps for all households.
- The objective is to facilitate the delivery of e-governance, e-health, e-education, e-banking, Internet and other services to the rural India.
- National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) -National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) is an ambitious initiative to trigger a broadband revolution in rural areas.
- It aims to connect all the Gram panchayats in the country and provide 100 Mbps connectivity to all gram panchayats (GPs).
- NTP- Union government has initiated measures to introduce 5G technology in India via the National Telecom Policy (NTP), from March 2018.
- It aims to achieve 100% tele-density, high-speed internet highways and delivery of citizen-centric services electronically.
- Forum to develop 5G roadmap - Recently, the Department of Telecommunications set up a high-level forum to develop the roadmap for operationalizing 5G services in India by 2020.
- Waivers for Private telecoms -The government also announced a subsidy of `3,600 crore to private telecom players such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Reliance Jio to set up Wi-Fi in rural areas as part of the second phase of the BharatNet project.
