Indian government saw a great response from the telecom sector during the 5G spectrum auctions. Talking about 5G in India, Devusinh Chauhan, Minister of State (MoS) for Communications, during the ITU regional standardization forum (for Asia and Oceania region) inauguration, said that by the end of this year, India would likely get to see indigenously developed, and manufactured 5G stack, getting deployed.
In addition, Chauhan said that Indian engineers have developed a set of 5G standards (he is talking about 5Gi) which will help with reaching the rural areas of the country with 5G network services. For the unaware, 5Gi is developed by the Telecommunications Standards Development Society India (TSDSI). 5Gi was envisioned with an aim to deliver enhanced network coverage in rural, remote and urban areas. There was a lot of backlash from the industry around 5Gi because it would have created a lot of problems for the 5G deployment. But then, 3GPP, the global standards body for telecommunications technologies, merged the 5Gi standard into its 5G standard, which solved a lot of the problems.
4G Mobile Networks have Reached 5,60,000 Villages of India
Chauhan said that 4G mobile networks have reached over 5,60,000 villages in India and around 1,75,000 villages in the country have access to optical fibre. The goal is to reach all 6,00,000 villages in the country with optical fibre and mobile communications by the end of 2025. It is an ambitious goal of the Indian government, but one that is in the right direction nonetheless.
Chauhan credited the fast growth of the Indian telecom sector over the last few years to the market-friendly policies of the Modi government. He said that in the field of telecom, PM Narendra Modi's government has rolled out policies with an emphasis on three pillars - 'Ease of Doing Business', 'Ease of Living', and 'Atma Nirbhar Bharat'.
