New Delhi: PM Modi on Saturday launched the 5G Services at the India Mobile Congress in Pragati Maidan. With a phased rollout plan, in the first 5G services will be operative in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Pune, Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad and Jamnagar.
At the launch event, PM Modi took a live demo from the Airtel 5G Booth to monitor the work in real-time by utilising VR and artificial intelligence. According to officials, the cumulative economic impact of 5G on India is estimated to reach $450 billion by 2035.
The Centre held its biggest ever telecom auction in September and received bids of Rs 1.5 lakh crore with Mukesh Ambani leading the race with Rs 88,078 crore worth o bids, followed by Airtel.
The launch of these services in India is expected to spur a new wave of innovations in Industry 4.0 applications such as machine-to-machine communications, Internet of Things (IoT), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) across automotive, healthcare, agriculture, energy, and others.
The 5G tariff information has not been disclosed by the telecom operators, but according to Ashwini Vaishnav, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, it would be comparable to 4G tariff plans. Consumers will have 5G pricing plans similar to 4G plans after 5G is properly deployed across the country, although this will take time. Given the amount of capital telecom operators have invested in setting up 5G services, the two major operators Airtel and Jio might only offer 5G as a bundled service on their premium tariff plans, thereby targeting their premium customers at first.