Huawei will participate in the upcoming 5G trials in India, the telecom ministry has officially confirmed. The government will allow all the vendors to participate in 5G trials, according to a report by PTI. “We have taken a decision to give 5G spectrum for trials to all players,” said Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. Earlier, it was reported that the Indian government might ban Huawei from conducting 5G trials in the country, but now, the Chinese vendor has received an official nod. Huawei's rivals Nokia and Ericsson were partnering with Indian telecom operators to deploy 5G network. Already, Huawei has been barred from using its equipment in countries like New Zealand and Australia due to security concerns.
Huawei to Participate in 5G Trials in India
The Indian government is aggressively in talks about bringing the 5G network to India. “5G is future, it is speed. We will encourage new innovation in 5G,” said the Telecom Minister to reporters at an event. Huawei has played a major part in expanding 4G network in India and several other countries and the decision to ban Huawei came as a surprise. However, it is believed that Huawei's back-door installation will leak important data to China, which is the reason behind barring Huawei from using its 5G tech. Countries like New Zealand and Australia already confirmed that they would not encourage Huawei in helping the telcos in their countries.
Several telecom operators in the United States and the United Kingdom also said they would remove the equipment of Huawei in usage by the next couple of years and will no longer take any telecom equipment from the Chinese company. Nevertheless, India is taking a different route as it will allow all the vendors to take part in 5G trials.
Furthermore, the PTI report also adds that Huawei may sign a “no back-door” agreement with the government to avoid the data leak issues in the future.
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5G Trials in India to Happen Very Soon
Everyone expected that we might see major things about 5G happening in India in 2019. Thanks to the whopping debt of Indian telcos, they forced the government to postpone the spectrum auction. In June 2019, the government promised to hold 5G trials by alloting a part of the spectrum to the telcos by the end of 2019. But that did not happen as telcos are not ready to even hear the word '5G' at the moment.
5G trials in India will happen very soon; We are expecting the government to hold these trials in the first half of 2020, followed by the 5G spectrum auction in the early second half of 2020, and the actual rollout in the first half of 2021. In several countries, 5G is already a thing and even smartphone brands have come up with cheaper 5G handsets. For example, Redmi K30 5G costs just 1,999 Yuan (approx. Rs 20,500) in China. We are not sure when smartphone brands will bring 5G devices to the Indian market. It makes no sense for them to launch 5G supported devices without an actual network, so we believe 5G phones to reach the country once the trials end.
All the top telcos are expected to roll out 5G in a phased manner, similar to 4G and 3G networks. The spectrum auction date will go official very soon.
