Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch the 5G telephony services, ushering in an era of ultra high-speed internet on mobile phones on Saturday. The service will be launched by the prime minister in select cities on Saturday and it will progressively cover the entire country over the next couple of years.
The PM will launch the much-awaited service at the 6th Edition of India Mobile Congress 2022 to be held from October 1-4, at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi.
Besides powering ultra-low latency connections, which allow downloading full-length high-quality video or movie to a mobile device in a matter of seconds (even in crowded areas), 5G can enable solutions such as e-health, connected vehicles, more-immersive augmented reality, and metaverse experiences, life-saving use cases, and advanced mobile cloud gaming, among others.
India's biggest ever auction of telecom spectrum held recently had received a record Rs 1.5 lakh crore of bids, with Mukesh Ambani's Jio cornering nearly half of all the airwaves sold with an Rs 88,078 crore bid.
The government has given a target of 80 percent coverage of 5G telecom services in the country in a short timeframe, Union Minister for Communications, Electronics & Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw had earlier said.
Experts have said 5G technology will greatly benefit India. It is likely to benefit the Indian economy by Rs 36.4 trillion ($455 billion) between 2023 and 2040, a recent report by a global industry body representing mobile network operators estimated.
5G will account for more than a third of total connections in India by 2030, with the share of 2G and 3G dwindling to less than 10 percent, the GSMA (Global System for Mobile Communications) report said, noting that India's high level of 4G adoption (79 percent) indicates a subscriber base ready to transition to 5G.
The report also estimated which sectors will realize how much benefit of 5G technology -- the manufacturing sector (representing 20 percent of the total benefit), retail (12 per cent), and agriculture (11 percent). India Mobile Congress (IMC), which claims to be the largest telecom, media, and technology forum in Asia, is jointly organised by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI).