These 13 Indian cities will get 5G services first, details here

The much-anticipated rollout of high-speed 5G services in India would start by October this year, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Thursday. "Telecom companies are busy laying infrastructure and 5G services should be launched by October and then scaled up at a very rapid pace," he told news agency PTI.

According to India's 5G spectrum auction data, Reliance Jio emerged as the highest bidder; followed by Bharti Airtel. This clearly implies that these two operators would be at the forefront of providing the fastest internet in the country.

Though the process to provide 5G services would be done in a phased manner, a similar step which has been seen earlier during the 4G rollout. The 5G services would be first provided on a pilot basis in some selected cities and later be expanded in other areas.

These 13 selected cities -- as per the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) -- are Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Gandhinagar, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Jamnagar, Kolkata, Chennai, Lucknow, Pune, Delhi and Mumbai.

The minister also stated that the high-speed 5G services would be available in most of the country in two-three years at "affordable" prices.

The DoT has received an upfront payment of around Rs 17,876 crore from Airtel, Jio, Adani Data Networks and Vodafone Idea for the spectrum they won in a recent auction, sources told PTI.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his Independence Day speech, spoke on 5G and said that the service would offer 10 times faster speeds and would soon start in India. Indian villages would get access to optical fibre and soon the internet would reach the remotest part of the country, he further stated.

In terms of speed, the thumb rule for 5G is 100 Mbps, though it may vary. The broad consensus for 4G is that it is in the range of 60-70 Mbps.

Apart from high-speed data, 5G also has the potential to enable several enterprise-level solutions such as machine-to-machine communications, connected vehicles, and more immersive augmented reality and metaverse experiences, among others.

5G refers to the fifth generation of cellular technology.

(With inputs from PTI)