Department of Telecommunications (DoT) seeks inputs from telcos on use of radio frequency spectrum

Department of Telecommunications (DoT) seeks inputs from telcos on use of radio frequency spectrum

Part of: GS Prelims and GS-III – Infrastructure

In news 

• The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has sought inputs from telcos and other industry experts on the sale and use of radio frequency spectrum over the next 10 years, including the 5G bands.

Important value additions 

• 5G or fifth generation is the latest upgrade in the long-term evolution (LTE) mobile broadband networks.
• 5G mainly works in 3 bands, namely low, mid and high frequency spectrum — all of which have their own uses as well as limitations.
• While the low band spectrum has shown great promise in terms of coverage and speed of internet and data exchange, the maximum speed is limited to 100 Mbps (Megabits per second). 
• The mid-band spectrum offers higher speeds compared to the low band, but has limitations in terms of coverage area and penetration of signals.
• The high-band spectrum offers the highest speed of all the three bands, but has extremely limited coverage and signal penetration strength.
• Internet speeds in the high-band spectrum of 5G has been tested to be as high as 20 Gbps (giga bits per second), while, in most cases, the maximum internet data speed in 4G has been recorded at 1 Gbps.

Related articles:

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• BRICS 5G Innovation Base: Click here