The GSM Association (GSMA) wants the Indian government to allocate the 6 GHz band for 5G to the telecom operators. However, there are some tech players who want the spectrum band to be delicensed so that it can be used for Wi-Fi services. At the World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-23), GSMA requested the union telecom minister of India, Ashwinin Vaishnaw, to direct the Indian delegation to support the mid-band spectrum to be used for 5G.
GMSA said that it is concerned that India's interventions on the issue at the WRC-23 do not reflect the technical work that has already been done at the global scale for the use of mid-band spectrum for IMT. This could negatively impact the progress that has been achieved in expanding mobile capacity.
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Indian telecom operators, including Jio and Airtel, have taken the onus to complete the fastest 5G rollout the world has ever seen. Due to this, more and more users are upgrading to 5G phones and getting latched to the 5G networks. The telcos, in the future, would need more capacity to serve users and for this, the mid-band spectrum would be required. Thus, GSMA as well as the COAI (Cellular Operators Association of India), a body that represents the private telcos, said that the government should give the 6 GHz band to the telcos for 5G.
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GSMA believes that India would require about 2 GHz of mid-band spectrum to adequately serve the customers. For this, the availability of the 6 GHz spectrum would be the best thing as it is currently only used partly by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). With the 6 GHz spectrum, telcos can offer networks with faster speeds to the consumers, all the while taking care of the coverage issues with small cells.
