The 5G launch is going to take place in the coming weeks and months. The government had identified 13 cities where the launch would take place in the initially. These cities were chosen on the basis of their economic returns for the operators. Now, according to a PTI report, the Samajwadi Party (SP) wants the inclusion of Odisha cities for the launch of 5G services as well. Rabindra Nath Behera, State President for the SP, wrote a letter to Ashwini Vaishnaw, the union telecom minister, saying that it is unfortunate to see that none of the cities from Odisha has been included in the 13 cities where 5G would be launched initially. Behera said that despite being the number one Smart City and the capital of the state, Bhubaneswar has been ignored be included on the list. Behera went as far as to call this a “betrayal” towards the state and asked Vaishnaw to revise his list and include Bhubaneswar. There are no comments from Vaishnaw’s office yet.
5G Spectrum Allocated to the Telcos
The 5G spectrum has been allocated to the telecom operators, and now the telcos are laying infrastructure so that they can soon roll out 5G. Airtel had said that it would launch 5G in August only. But going by the words of Vaishnaw, the 5G launch in India would take place around October 2022. The telcos have already trialled several use cases of the 5G network along with their technology partners/vendors. All that’s left now is the rollout of commercial 5G. It would be interesting to see which telecom operator is the first in the scene to launch 5G services in the country. Most likely, the race for launching 5G first would be between Airtel and Jio. But it could also be Vodafone Idea (Vi) that could launch 5G first in the national capital - Delhi.
