The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology will review preparedness for 5G technology on Tuesday.
The panel has invited representatives of telcos, Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to hear their views.
The parliamentary panel, headed by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, will hear the views of the representatives of Reliance Jio Infocomm, Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel on the subject India’s preparedness for 5G.
The panel will record the evidence of the representatives of the Ministry of Communications’ Department of Telecommunications and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on the subject.
A recent research report from Motilal Oswal Financial Services indicates that the Capex requirement for pan-India 5G network coverage would stand at Rs 1.3 to Rs 2.3 trillion in terms of mid or low band spectrum.
The total capital expenditure required for 5G rollout is estimated to be Rs 187 billion (Rs 18,700 crore) for Delhi and Mumbai.
The report said the Capex requirement for obtaining 100MHz mid band spectrum in Mumbai would be Rs 84 billion based on the TRAI price.
Assuming 9000 cellular sites would be required for coverage with cost at INR 2 million per site, the Capex requirement for the sites would be INR 18 billion, taking the total Capex to around INR 100 billion for rolling out 5G network in Mumbai.
Capex requirement for 5G rollout in Delhi would be INR 87 billion – assuming 100MHz mid band spectrum at base price of INR 69 billion.
Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel are favouring delay in 5G spectrum auction considering their financial conditions.
Recently, Reliance Jio has asked telecom department to speed up the proposed 5G spectrum auction.
Chip maker Qualcomm and Jio Platforms (Jio), along with its subsidiary Radisys, announced their efforts to develop open and inter-operable interface compliant architecture based 5G solutions with a virtualised RAN.
Qualcomm Technologies and Jio also announced that they achieved over a 1 Gbps milestone on the Jio 5GNR solution, leveraging the Qualcomm 5G RAN Platforms. This achievement supports Jio’s 5G credentials.
