5G Technology and Spectrum Trials

5G Technology and Spectrum Trials

Part of: GS Prelims and GS – III – Infrastructure 

In news

• The Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Government of India approved permissions to Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) for conducting trials for use and applications of 5G technology.

Key takeaways 

• The applicant TSPs include Bharti Airtel Ltd., Reliance JioInfocomm Ltd., Vodafone Idea Ltd. and MTNL.
• The duration of the trials, at present, is for a period of 6 months.
• Each TSP will have to conduct trials in rural, semi-urban settings and urban settings so that the benefit of 5G Technology proliferates across the country. 
• Objective: Testing 5G spectrum propagation characteristics especially in the Indian context; model tuning and evaluation of chosen equipment and vendors; testing of indigenous technology; testing of applications; and to test 5G phones and devices.
• 5G technology is expected to deliver improved user experience in terms of data download rates (expected to be 10 times that of 4G), up to three times greater spectrum efficiency, and ultra low latency to enable Industry 4.0.

Do you know? 

5Gi technology

• The TSPs are encouraged to conduct trials using 5Gi technology in addition to the already known 5G Technology.
• International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has also approved the 5Gi technology as it facilitates much larger reach of the 5G towers and Radio networks.
• The 5Gi technology has been developed by IIT Madras, Centre of Excellence in Wireless Technology (CEWiT) and IIT Hyderabad.