NEW DELHI: The government has set up a 5G committee to draw a road map for rollout of next generation telecom technology (5G) by 2020. It is likely to create a corpus of Rs 500 crore to fund research and product development on 5G activity in India.
“We have created a high-level 5G committee that will work on the vision, mission and goals of 5G. When the world rolls out 5G in 2020, I believe India will be at par with them,” said Manoj Sinha, telecom minister, on Tuesday.
The 5G technology is expected to provide the platform for the government to deliver about 10,000 megabit per second data speeds in urban areas and 1000 Mbps data speed in rural locations.
According to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Committee on Digital economic policy - 5G technologies rollout will help in increasing GDP, creating employment, digitising the economy.
The committee will consist of secretaries from the Department of Telecom, the Ministry of Electronics and IT, and the Department of Science and Technology. The committee will be supported by renowned experts like A. Paulraj, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University, USA, Gururaj Deshpande - Chairman of Sycamore Networks, Sandstone, USA, Indian industry led by CEOs of ICT industry, Telecom Standard Development Organisation of India (TSDSI), Professors from IIT Madras, IIT Mumbai, IIT Delhi, IIT Hyderabad, IISc Bengaluru, IT industry and stakeholders from industry associations.
The committee will suggest ways for an early deployment of 5G in India and make India a globally competitive product development and manufacturing ecosystem targeting 50 per cent of Indian market and 10 per cent of global market over the next 5-7 years.
Further, it will also help in developing, designing and manufacturing 5G technologies, products and solutions in India; 5G start-ups that enable this design and manufacturing capabilities; generation of IPR backing the above designs; manufacturing 5G chipsets, which may require massive investments; creating appropriate testbeds and technology platforms to enable and help Indian technical ecosystem to have an edge in 5G.