MIB Ensuring that 5G Doesn’t Interfere With Broadcasting

With 5G rollouts nearby, there are a lot of things and a lot of rules and measures that multiple industries along with the government will have to oversee. The collaboration between multiple sectors is important because 5G frequencies could bring interference to multiple existing systems and services.

The Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (MIB) has asked all the DTH (Direct-to-Home), HITS, and MSOs to avoid any scenarios of interference of their services with 5G.

For the unaware, the broadcasting services operate in spectrum between 3700 MHz – 4200 MHz in India. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will be auctioning airwaves in the 3300 MHz – 3670 MHz for 5G services in the upcoming spectrum auction. This means that there’s just a 30 MHz spectrum guard in between 5G and broadcasting services.

MIB Issues New Advisory to Avoid Interference Between 5G and Broadcasting Services

To avoid any scenarios of interference, the MIB has suggested all the operators in India use high-quality bandpass filters and LNBs with narrowband filters. Using these devices will ensure that there is no interference between 5G and broadcasting services.

It is worth noting that back in 2018, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had suggested auctioning airwaves in the 3300 MHz – 3600 MHz bands for the 5G rollout. With this, there would have been a guard band of 100 MHz between the broadcasting and 5G services. But this changed to 3300 MHz – 3670 MHz for 5G, leaving a band guard of only 30 MHz.

The satellite broadcasters weren’t very happy with this move as they wanted at least a 100 MHz guard band to be maintained. But that’s unlikely to
happen now. The spectrum auction will be scheduled soon once the Cabinet gives its final decision on the price of the airwaves. The DoT is only waiting for the decision from the Cabinet to arrive to start sending Notice Inviting Application (NIA) for the spectrum auction.