DoT forms Committee to create Strategy for 5G and 5Gi

Sources report that the committee, formed under the Member (Technology) of DoT, will seek recommendations from the stakeholders in the industry regarding both 5G and 5Gi. The stakeholders, including telcos, network providers, gear makers, and others will be mandated to send their views.

Essentially, the government wants to know the viability of having 5G networks. This includes having information about the current availability of 5G products, devices, and applications. It also includes making 5G devices more widely available to the customers, and what can stakeholders do to ensure that.

The committee has sought views for both the short-term, that is, till March 2022, and for the long term. After the DoT receives the recommendations, it will formulate a strategy to create a 5G ecosystem in the country, and increase the proliferation of the 5G devices in the country.

Also, the DoT wants to create a strategy to better commercialize and monetize both 5G and 5Gi. The government wants to promote the latter and wants telcos to use it. However, telcos have been reluctant to take the 5Gi standard up, and have called for implementing the 3GPP standard. Thankfully, the telcos have the choice, for now.

Earlier, the DoT was reprimanded by the Parliamentary Standing Committee for IT, chaired by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor. According to the Standing Committee, the DoT had failed to do enough preparations to launch 5G services in India. The committee further added that at a time when many countries were moving towards 5G, India was likely to witness its deployment only by the end of 2021 or early 2022.

However, all signs indicate that 5G deployment in India will start late in 2022. That is a very optimistic timeline; it can only happen if the DoT organizes the 5G spectrum auction sometime in March 2022.