Prime Minister Narendra Modi is officially going to inaugurate the first 5G mobile services commercially on Saturday (October 1), at the India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2022, where business tycoons like Mukesh Ambani, Sunil Bharti Mittal and Kumar Mangalam Birla will also be present.
According to sources from the industry, the 5G services of Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio will be the first ones to get launched by the Prime Minister, in a few cities.
Airtel’s CEO Gopal Vittal recently in a letter to customers, had also indicated that “within a few weeks, we will commence the launch of our next generation technology, Airtel 5G”, adding that the Airtel SIMs are already 5G-enabled and it will work seamlessly on 5G smartphones.
Mukesh Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Industries had also announced in August that “By December 2023, which is less than 18 months from today, we will deliver Jio 5G to every town, every taluka, and every tehsil of our country.” The company is investing Rs.2 lakh crore to build its pan-India 5G network.
During the four-day IMC event, all the three business tycoons – Ambani, Mittal and Birla – are expected to talk about the roadmap towards 5G for their respective companies in the coming years.
The companies had aggressively bid for 5G auctions held in July-August, and bought airwaves in various 4G and 5G bands (a total of 51.27 GHz) sold at the total price of ₹1.5-lakh crore.
The companies have also paid the upfront payments totalling around ₹17,873 crore to the Department of Telecommunications. While, Airtel paid ₹8,312 crore, Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea paid ₹7,864 crore and ₹1,680 crore, respectively. Adani Enterprises, which bid for the first time, paid around ₹19 crore.