India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT)issued permits for 5G trials to Bharti Airtel, Reliance JioInfocomm, Vodafone Idea, and MTNL.
Equipment vendors and technology providers supplying these operators for the trials are Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and C-DOT. In addition, Reliance JioInfocomm Ltd. will also be conducting trials using its own indigenous technology. Huawei and ZTE are not included in the trials.
DoT has approved experimental spectrum in the mid-band (3.2 GHz to 3.67 GHz), millimeter wave band (24.25 GHz to 28.5 GHz) and in Sub-Gigahertz band (700 GHz). TSPs will also be permitted to use their existing spectrum owned by them (800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2500 MHz) for conduct of 5G trials.
Some other notes from DoT:
- The duration of the trials, at present, is for a period of 6 months. This includes a time period of 2 months for procurement and setting up of the equipment.
- The test equipment is not to be connected to the operator’s existing networks.
- Trials will be on non-commercial basis.
- The data generated during the trials shall be stored in India.
- The operators are also expected to facilitate the testing of the indigenously developed use cases and equipment as part of the trials.
- One hundred applications/ use cases selected by DoT after conducting the recent Hackathon on 5G applications can also be facilitated in these trials.