The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is expected to meet senior officials from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the Ministry of Civil Aviation, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to sort out the final details on 5G spectrum airwaves and the different bands currently occupied by these ministries.
The department has also requested ISRO and the Department of Space to not press for its claim on the 26MHz, so that it could make available at least 3000 MHz in accordance with the recommendations made by the International Telecommunication Union.
One of the officials said, “Only the formalities of who will operate in which bands needs to be agreed upon. We hope to complete the auction in March at the earliest but no later than June.”
The trials for 5G services and its proficiency have been going on at specific locations in Gurgaon, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Delhi and others, from quite some time now. It is said that these cities, including Jamnagar, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Pune, and Gandhinagar, would be among the first ones to get 5G services this year.
The three private telecom service providers, Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio Infocomm, and Vodafone Idea have been working with telecom equipment makers such as Ericsson, Nokia, and others and have been conducting trials at test sites in these cities.
