• Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the 5G mobile services that promise to provide ultra high-speed internet on mobile phones, saying it marks the beginning of a new era and presents an infinite sky of opportunities.

• The ​​5G services in India were launched at the inaugural ceremony of India Mobile Congress 2022, which is being jointly organised by the Department of Telecommunications and Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI). 

• Bharti Airtel’s 5G service will be available in eight cities — New Delhi, Mumbai, Varanasi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Nagpur and Siliguri.

• Reliance Jio will launch its services in four metros sometime this month.

• The 5G services will progressively cover the entire country over the next couple of years — Jio promises to do that by December 2023 and Bharti Airtel by March 2024.

Importance of 5G technology

• 5G is the fifth generation of mobile communications technology. It will supplement the 2G, 3G and 4G mobile networks currently deployed in India and will add evolutionary and revolutionary services.

• Roughly every ten years, the next generation of mobile communications network is released, bringing faster speeds and increased capabilities. The first generation (1G) of wireless networks brought the very first cellphones. 2G brought improved coverage and texting. 3G introduced voice with data/Internet, and 4G long-term-evolution (LTE) delivered increased speeds to keep up with mobile data demand.

• 5G represents a complete transformation of telecommunication networks, introducing a wealth of benefits that will pave the way for new capabilities, and support connectivity for applications like smart cities, autonomous vehicles, and telemedicine.

• 5G will provide internet speed and capacity at least 10 times higher than 4G services.

• 5G will additionally also connect a myriad of new devices including machines, sensors, actuators, vehicles, robots and drones, to support a much larger range of applications and services.

• With speeds multiple times faster than 4G and lag-free connectivity, 5G can enable billions of connected devices to share data in real time. It holds the promise of revolutionising sectors from health care and education to agriculture and disaster monitoring.

• 5G technology will bolster and propel India’s position as an economic and tech powerhouse globally and will provide new opportunities for startups to come up with innovative solutions to solve existing challenges, create jobs and contribute to India's economic resilience. 

• 5G technology has the potential for ushering a major societal transformation in India by enabling a rapid expansion of the role of information technology across manufacturing, educational, health care, agricultural, financial and social sectors.

• The 5G testbed has been developed as a multi-institute collaborative project by eight institutes. The indigenous 5G test bed, a visionary technology development project initiated in telecom space, will enable development, testing and proliferation of 5G technology system components, cross-sectoral use cases, besides setting up the foundation for the development of “6G Technology landscape” in the country.

Manorama Yearbook app is now available on Google Play Store and iOS App Store