5G roll-out in India: Union Minister for Railways, Communications, Electronics & Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw said that 200 big cities will be covered with 5G internet services in phase 1. It may be noted that fifth-generation high-speed internet services will be available to all Indians by 2024. Telecom giants including Airtel will cover most of the country by 2023.
Vaishnaw also said that at least four cities of Odisha will get the 5G telephony services by March 2023 and 80 per cent area of the state will have access to the upgraded network by the end of next year.
The minister said that the targetted date of completion of phase-1 rollout is March 2023. It may be recalled that Airtel has already launched 5G services across eight cities in India. These cities are Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Siliguri, Nagpur and Varanasi. As many as 13 major cities including Ahmadabad, Chandigarh, Gandhinagar, Gurugram, Jamnagar, Kolkata, Lucknow and Pune were supposed to be covered by the 5G services in the first phase.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on October 1 launched the 5G services that promise to provide ultra high-speed internet on mobile phones.
Noteworthy to mention that India's 5G technology has been indigenously developed and the country is ready to share it with other countries as well, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said.
Top smartphone makers including Apple and Samsung have said that they will upgrade the software for their 5G-enabled phones in India. Apple said that it will start rolling out 5G software updates for iPhone users in December. The upgrade will be for models, including the iPhone 14, 13, 12 and iPhone SE.
Samsung has said that it will roll out over-the-air updates across all its 5G devices by mid-November.
(With PTI inputs)
