Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday asked telecom service providers to gear up for 5G launch. Spectrum allocation letters had been issued, he said in a tweet.
The Department of Telecom (DoT) has received payment of around Rs 17,876 crore from service providers—Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, Adani Data Networks and Vodafone Idea for spectrum they won in a recent auction.
The country's biggest ever auction of telecom spectrum received a record Rs 1.5 lakh crore worth of bids, with Mukesh Ambani's Jio cornering nearly half of all the airwaves sold with a Rs 87,946.93 crore bid. Airtel had said that it will roll out 5G services this month.
5G update: Spectrum assignment letter issued. Requesting TSPs to prepare for 5G launch.
— Ashwini Vaishnaw (@AshwiniVaishnaw) August 18, 2022
While all telecom operators opted to make payments in 20 annual installments, Bharti Airtel paid Rs 8,312.4 crore equivalent to four annual installments, according to reports.
In his Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that 5G mobile services would start soon. He had said that digital technology would change common man's lives. "India's techade is here! With 5G, semiconductor manufacturing & Optical Fibre Cable (OFCs) in villages, we are bringing a revolution through Digital India to the grassroots level," Modi said.
-with PTI inputs
