A month after a Union minister asked the telecom service providers to be ready for the rollout of the services, persons familiar with the situation said on Saturday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will announce 5G services in India during the India Mobile Congress on October 1.
Within the next month, the Prime Minister will kick off a four-day event at which major telecoms like Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, & Vodafone Idea will reveal their 5G plans for the country.
“The 5G services will roll out in India at the India Mobile Congress on October 1,” said a person who dealt with the matter.
The India Mobile Congress (IMC) is co-hosted by the Indian government’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) (COAI).
After announcing over a month ago that it would invest 2 lakh crore to provide 5G services in major cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, & Kolkata by Diwali and throughout India by December 2019, Reliance Industries Ltd has finally made good on its promise.
By Diwali 2022, major Indian cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, & Chennai would be covered by Jio 5G, announced India’s largest operator, Reliance Jio.
“Within the next two months, by Diwali, we will launch Jio 5G across multiple key cities, including the metropolises of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai. By December 2023, which is less than 18 months from today, we will deliver Jio 5G to every town, every taluka, and every tehsil of our country,” on 29th Aug, Ambani said to the shareholders at the company’s yearly public conference.
Meanwhile, Bharti Airtel, Reliance’s rival, plans for launching the 5G service in 5,000 towns and cities in March 2024.“By December, we should have coverage in key metros. After that, we will expand rapidly to cover the entire country,” earlier this month, said the chief executive officer Gopal Vittal, of the second largest telecom operator.
“We understand that the spectrum purchased is good enough for covering the entire country. So, there’s good reason to believe that in the coming two to three years, we’ll have very good coverage of 5G in the entire country,” said Ashwini Vaishnaw, the telecom minister after the auction.
Vaishnaw has said that he is optimistic that 5G network rollouts will start in October.
