Trai’s recommendation on 5G spectrum by March, says minister Ashwani Vaishnaw

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) recommendation on fifth generation (5G) spectrum is expected to come by March, said Union minister Ashwani Vaishnaw on Tuesday. After this, a spectrum auction will be held expeditiously for the rollout of the next-generation telecoms service, he added.

Vaishnaw’s statement came hours after finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that spectrum auctions will be carried out this year, while presenting the Union budget for the 2022-23 fiscal. It will facilitate a rollout of the next-generation telecoms service by private telecom providers within next year, that is, the financial year (FY) 2023, the finance minister said.

Vaishnaw further said the telecom ministry is parallelly working on other auction-related processes to start the spectrum auction at the earliest. He further said the Budget tabled in Parliament focuses on enhancing research and development of indigenous technology.

In her Union Budget 2022-23 speech, Sitharaman also reduced voluntary exit for corporates to six months from two years.

She further said the scheme for design-led manufacturing will bring a strong ecosystem for 5G as part of the Production Linked Incentive Scheme (PLI). The government will be awarding contracts for laying optical fiber in all villages, including remote areas, under the BharatNet project in 2022 and 2023.

This will be carried out under a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) scheme, and its completion is expected by 2025.

The fifth generation spectrum is the latest upgrade in the long-term evolution (LTE) mobile broadband networks. While 4G allows people to stream music and video on the go, 5G is designed to connect many more types of devices than smartphones and offers far higher speed and capacity.