Bhopal will be India’s first 5G-enabled smart city, the government of Madhya Pradesh announced. The capital city of one of India’s biggest states will pilot 5G internet services in select areas in the next four months, giving citizens access to high-speed internet. With this announcement, Bhopal joins the list of Indian cities, such as Mumbai, New Delhi, Lucknow, and Bengaluru, that the Department of Telecom said will get 5G services first.
In a tweet, the MP MyGov Twitter account said that Bhopal will emerge as India’s first city to roll out 5G services for citizens. The pilot project, which will begin in the next four months, will involve a partnership between the government and one of India’s telecom companies to conduct 5G trials. However, it is not currently clear which company will be chosen for the project.
During the Budget 2022 in February, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the commercial deployment of 5G services in India may begin towards the end of 2022. The spectrum auction is likely to take place towards the middle of the year, but there are no concrete details yet. The Department of Telecom has confirmed that 5G trial sites have already been installed in select cities. These cities are Gurugram, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Delhi, Jamnagar, Ahmadabad, Chennai, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Pune, and Gandhinagar.
Bhopal was not a part of the list, but the Madhya Pradesh government has announced that it will be the first city to have 5G services. India’s leading telecom companies, Airtel, Jio, and Vi India, have not confirmed any details about 5G trial sites in Bhopal yet. But, in the meantime, all three companies have been conducting trials in other major cities. Airtel, for instance, said last week that it is ready to roll out 5G in India as soon as the spectrum auction takes place. Jio and Vi have similar plans.
The Indian market is already brimming with 5G phones at different price points. According to the telecom companies, easy access to 5G phones will help them reach a wide consumer base. The tariffs for 5G services are also likely to be in line with the 4G plans. According to Airtel, the 5G services are not likely to levy a premium on customers. This means customers may not have to pay anything extra to access 5G, at least initially. "We will know the final costs only after the spectrum auction. If you look at other markets, where operators are already proving 5G, we haven't seen them charging a premium for it over 4G," Airtel CTO Randeep Sekhon said.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Welcome To My Blog.