TRAI recommendations on 5G spectrum by month end or in April: TRAI Chairman Veghela

Hyderabad: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is likely to submit its recommendation on 5G spectrum by the end of this month or by the second week of April. After this, the Centre will look to take up auctions at the earliest and the post auction work will take another three to five months, […]

Hyderabad: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is likely to submit its recommendation on 5G spectrum by the end of this month or by the second week of April. After this, the Centre will look to take up auctions at the earliest and the post auction work will take another three to five months, TRAI chairman Dr PD Vaghela said on Wednesday.

Delivering a virtual lecture on ‘5G: Next Generation Technology,’ organised by the Administrative Staff College of India, he said the current 4G network can be used with some tweaks and focus will be on launching the 5G service in urban areas first. “From the experience of countries where 5G has been launched, telecom operators are finding it difficult to increase the tariffs. However, industries and commercial establishments can opt for this initially in view of the speed,” he said.

A set of pilots are being taken up covering an airport, sea port, a metro city and a small city. The results will be used to make guidelines that civic bodies have to follow while dealing with telecom infrastructure expansion, he said.

On a query on health concerns and also 5G interfering with aircraft safety systems, Veghela said there are no studies yet that say 5G was responsible for these. The new technology is already being implemented by 90 plus countries and no incident has been reported on these lines, he pointed out.

In India, there are 116.6 crore people who use mobile phones and about 83.3 crore internet users. About 30 crore people use social media. The tariffs in India are among the lowest, he said, adding that the average cost of 1 GB data in many countries was about $8.53 while in India it was Rs 10.95. An average user consumed about 14 GB.

The 5G will be about 20 times faster than 4G and the latency will be reduced by ten times. This will be handy in healthcare and remote surgeries, precision agriculture, autonomous vehicles, video calling, virtual reality, games, education, smart homes and cities and also mining among others. “Unmanned vehicles can be used inside the mines. This will reduce the incidence of accidents,” he said.

ASCI Director General (i/c) Prof Nirmalya Bagchi and ASCI Court of Governors Chairman K Padmanabhaiah also spoke. They sought to know how 5G will impact the digital divide, privacy and secrecy issues, cost of service and others.

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