Spectrum auction ends, telecom minister says 5G network to be launched in India in October

On June 16 this year, India officially approved the auction of 5G spectrum, which is scheduled for the end of July. Indian Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said at the time that commercial 5G services will be launched as soon as possible after the successful auction of 5G spectrum, which is expected to be in August or September this year.

According to media reports, the auction is for 72097.85MHz spectrum with a validity period of 20 years. This includes the 600 MHz, 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2300 MHz, 3300 MHz and 26 GHz frequency bands. The three operators, Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, and Indian billionaire Gautam Adani participated in the auction.

The auction went on for days and rounds of bidding as the auction was so intense. After 40 rounds of bidding, the auction finally came to an end, with the Indian government receiving a total of INR 15.6 trillion bids. Among them, Reliance Jio won the highest bid in the auction of the 700MHz frequency band, and successfully obtained this frequency band with the best call quality and network performance.

At present, all three suppliers in India are preparing to launch 5G networks by the end of this year. Among them, Bharti Airtel has announced cooperation with Samsung, Nokia and Ericsson, and started 5G network deployment this month.

In addition, Indian Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said in an interview that after the auction, the Indian government held a meeting to approve the spectrum allocation, and it is expected that operators will be able to allocate spectrum by August 10. So India should be able to roll out 5G in first-tier cities in October and expand to other regions next year.