India To Begin 5G Spectrum Trials In June With Vodafone Idea, Airtel And Jio; Decision On Huawei Pending

After much delay, India will finally get its first-ever 5G spectrum trial starting from next month (June), and all the major telcos will participate in the test run for three months, reports Mint.

The decision on the trial run's period and the list of participants in it was drawn up by a telecom Ministry panel.

India's top three telecom players - Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio - will initially test the equipment for three months, with the option of scaling this up to 1 year if they need more time for network stabilisation.

Telecom equipment vendors - Samsung, Nokia and Ericsson - have received the green signal from the panel to go ahead with the tests.

Presently Jio is expected to partner with Samsung, Nokia with Airtel and VIL with Ericsson for the trial. No decision on allowing the Chinese company Huawei to partner with an Indian company has been taken up by the panel.

While the ministry is expected to complete the allocation of spectrum in the next 15 days, the network trial licenses will be issued in a few days. Subsequently, the telcos could begin the initial 5G run in June itself.

After the 5G trial is completed, the spectrum auctions will come up in October.

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