EXCLUSIVE: 5G era has dawned in India, it'll take some time for implementation, says Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Union Minister of State for Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Wednesday said the companies will take some time to implement 5G service in the country and that it is not a game of instant gratification.

Telecom companies like Reliance Jio, Vodafone, and Airtel are now going to build this network and the process will take some time, the minister said in an exclusive conversation with Business Today TV. He said the 5G era has dawned in India, it will take some time to get to implementation.  
 
On October 1, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the 5G services in the country. The launch happened at the inaugural ceremony of IMC (Indian Mobile Congress) 2022 which is being jointly organized by the Department of Telecommunications and the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI).
 
When asked as to why the launch happened when resources were not ready yet, Chandrasekhar said that the government's role was more or less done in terms of enabling the 5G ecosystem. It is reasonably sensible, he said, to understand that networks don't get built overnight. New pieces of equipment will need to be added. "The government has announced that we are in the 5G era, all operators have given their respective timelines," he said.  

The union minister further said that expectation that within a fortnight a service can be turned on within is not possible and that a network rollout of this scale and magnitude does take time. "As somebody who has seen the evolution of the Indian telecom system, I am excited about 5G," he said.
 
Chandrasekhar said 5G represents the 5th generation of person-to-person communication and people are going to see the internet which they thought of as multiple machines and multiple people. He said all industries like agriculture and manufacturing are going to see deep "tech-tonic innovation".  
 
“If you have thought that the internet you have seen so far is great, you have seen nothing yet...Next decade is going to be India’s decade," he said.
 
Initially, the 5G services will be available in select metro cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata. Reliance Jio said it will roll out its 5G services in 4 metro cities - Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai -  by Diwali. Airtel has launched 5G services in 8 cities, including Delhi, Varanasi, Mumbai, and Bangalore. Airtel CEO Sunil Mitta said his company's 5G service will reach every home by March 2024.
 
However, days after these announcements, Paytm boss Vijay Shekhar Sharma took to Twitter to complain that he bought a phone to use 5G but he was unable to do that. "Hello@Airtel_Presence, even the Google Pixel 6a is not showing 5G network option in Delhi. All upgrades done and I bought this phone just to use 5G," he wrote on Twitter.