Auctioning 5G spectrum bands

What is the News?

The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister has given its nod for the auction of the spectrum that can be used to offer 5G services. It has also announced that it has reserved a portion of airwaves for captive private networks.

What are the 5G Spectrum Auctions announced by the Government?

Click Here to read about it

When will the commercial rollout of 5G happen?

5G deployment is likely to start from August-September this year and service should commence in about 20-25 cities by the year-end.

Note: As per a report by a Government Panel on 5G, even after the entry of 5G into the Indian networks, the earlier generation mobile technologies — 2G, 3G and 4G, will continue to remain in use and may take 10 or more years to phase out.

What are the issues highlighted by the Industry?

The two issues that the industry has highlighted with regards to the upcoming auctions are 1) High reserve prices for the spectrum and 2) Direct allotment of spectrum to enterprises for setting up captive private networks.

What benefits are likely to come with 5G?

High Speed: As per the set standards, with 5G, the peak network speeds are expected to be in the range of 2-20 Gbps as opposed to about 25 Mbps on current 4G networks.

Emerging Technologies: 5G is expected to form the backbone of emerging technologies such as IoT and machine-to-machine communications, thereby supporting a much larger range of applications and services, such as telesurgery and real-time data analytics. 

Low Latency: Ultra-low latency offered by 5G makes the technology desirable for such use cases. Latency is the amount of time data takes to travel between its source and destination.

Source: The post is based on the article “Auctioning 5G spectrum bands” published in The Hindu on 19th June 2022.