5G services to be launched on 1 Oct by PM Modi

The government's National Broadband Mission tweeted on Saturday that the 5G services in India will be launched on 1 October at India Mobile Congress at Pragati Maidan.

The National Broadband Mission also said that the 5G services will be launched at an event by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Ashwini Vaishnaw, while addressing an event last week, said, "The journey of 5G is going to be very exciting and noted that many countries took multiple years to reach 40 per cent to 50 per cent coverage.But we are targeting a very aggressive timeline and the Government has given a target of 80 per cent coverage in a short time frame and we should definitely cover at least 80 per cent in a very short timeframe."

In August, the Union minister had asked telcos to gear up for the 5G services launch post the issuance of spectrum allocation letters.

The DoT has received payment of around ₹17,876 crore from service providers Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, Adani Data Networks and Vodafone Idea for the spectrum they won in a recent auction.

The country's biggest ever auction of telecom spectrum received a record ₹1.5 lakh crore worth of bids, with Mukesh Ambani's Jio cornering nearly half of all the airwaves sold with an ₹87,946.93 crore bid.