The committee was set up by Government in September 2017 to suggest a road map for adoption of 5G.
Recommendations
- It has proposed promulgation of key norms on regulatory matters by March 2019 in order to facilitate early deployment of 5G technology.
- It expects commercial rollout of 5G in India by 2020.
- It noted that 5G technologies will start entering service globally beginning 2019 and advance to full range of services by 2024.
- It recommended that deployment of 5G in India should be classified into three phases based on technologies and use cases.
- By early embracing 5G technology, India can accelerate its dividends and potentially also become innovator in 5G applications.
- It expects that economic impact of 5G to be over $1 trillion.
- The committee noted that vendor ecosystem for 5G is maturing as telecom tech giants like Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei and ZTE have production ready equipment in trials based on 5G-NR standard.
- China Telecom is doing a pilot deployment in six cities ahead of the full 5G commercial launch in 2020.
- The committee also pointed out conflicting considerations faced by early adoption of 5G.
- The early adoption will likely make equipment needed for 5G roll out more expensive and it will also be glitchy as needed for cost maturing.
- However, early adoption will fast track India’s embrace of 5G’s benefits and increase opportunities to develop innovative use cases that support Indian needs.
- The committee also noted that even after entry of 5G into Indian telecom sector, the earlier generation mobile technologies – 2G, 3G and 4G, will continue to remain in use and it may take 10 or more years to phase out