Government Sets Up Body for 5G, Eyes Rollout by 2020

The government on Tuesday set up a high-level 5G committee with a mandate to lay down a road map for rollout of the technology by 2020.

"We have created a high-level 5G committee that will work on vision mission and goals of 5G. When the world will roll out 5G in 2020, I believe India will be at par with them," Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha said.

According to officials, the government is working on creating a corpus of Rs. 500 crores to fund 5G activity, mainly on research and product development.

Under the 5G technology, the government aims to deliver about 10,000 megabits per second (Mbps) in urban areas and 1000Mbps in rural locations. The 5G forum will comprise secretaries from the Department of Telecom, the Ministry of Electronics and IT, and the Department of Science and Technology.

Earlier this month, Qualcomm CEO Steven Mollenkopf said the first 5G phones ready to meet next-generation mobile standards will be available for the mass market in 2019 - a year ahead of most predictions - in several Asian countries and the United States.

Mollenkopf, chief executive of the world's top maker of smartphone chips, said in an interview that rising consumer and business demands were forcing the industry to accelerate its previous 2020 timeline to upgrade to new networks and devices.

Commercialisation of 5G is vital to the fortunes of makers of network equipment gear such as Huawei, Nokia and Ericsson, as well as device makers like Samsung Electronics and Apple by enabling demand for new features and equipment upgrades.

Written with agency inputs