On 1st October 2022 Prime Minister, Narendra Modi inaugurated the 6th edition of the India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2022 that will be held from 1st October 2022 to 4th October 2022 with the theme, “New digital Universe” and also launched the first phase of 5G services in Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, Delhi.
Key highlights:
i.In the first phase – Delhi, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Gandhinagar, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Jamnagar, Chandigarh, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai and Pune are the 13 cities which will get 5G services.
ii.India’s 3 major telecom operators that includes Reliance Jio, Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel demonstrated one use case each in front of the PM to showcase the potential of 5G technology in India.
- An inter-ministerial committee on 5G use cases has been functioning since 2021 in coordination with 12 central ministries, for setting up of 5G use-case labs.
iii.The cumulative economic impact on the launch of 5G on India is expected to reach USD 450 billion by 2035.
About 5G technology:
i.The 5G technology provides seamless coverage, high data rate, low latency, highly reliable communications and will also increase energy efficiency, spectrum efficiency and network efficiency.
ii.This also helps in real-time monitoring of disasters, precision agriculture, and minimises the role of humans in dangerous industrial operations such as in deep mines and offshore activities.
- This is expected to deliver 10 times better download speed than that of 4G and up to 3 times greater spectrum efficiency.
PM Launches 5G NSA Core by C-DOT at IMC 2022
PM launched the 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) Core that was indigenously designed and developed by the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) in IMC, 2022.
- In the occasion, end-to-end 5G call was demonstrated using C-DOT 5G NSA Core installed at BSNL Chandigarh and 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) that was developed in collaboration with Wisig Networks, VVDN Technologies and Radisys India Private Limited.
Highlights:
C-DOT demonstrated its wide range of technology including Optical Communication, Switching & Routing Systems, Wireless Communication (WiFi-4G & 5G), Cyber Security, Quantum Communication, Network Management and a host of Telecom software applications based on internet of things (IoT)/M2M, Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Language (ML), Augmented Reality (AR)/Virtual Reality (VR) and Big Data.
- Various other 5G use-cases have also been implemented in collaboration with national academic institutions and local start-ups including the demonstration of remote medical assistance
About C-DOT:
TheC-DOT is a telecom Research & Development (R&D) centre of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) under Ministry of Communications that mainly focuses on the design, development and production of globally-competitive, cost-effective and market-ready Telecom technology systems for a wider reach, in collaboration with other telecom startups and relevant stakeholders.
Bharti Airtel Becomes the First Company to Launch 5G Services in India
Bharti Airtel has launched 5G service in 8 cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Varanasi, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Nagpur and Siliguri to become the 1st company to launch 5G services in India.
Key points:
i.The Airtel 5G services will be available at existing 4G rates and a new tariff scheme for 5G will be announced later.
ii.The users must have 5G mobile phones to get connected to the 5G services.
Note – Recently, Barati Airtel has boosted spectrum holding by acquiring 19,867.8 MHZ spectrum in 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 3300 MHz and 26 GHz bands worth Rs. 43,084 crore.
