PM Modi to launch 5G services in India today

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch the 5G telephony services, ushering in an era of ultra high-speed internet on mobile phones on Saturday. The service will be launched by the prime minister in select cities on Saturday and it will progressively cover the entire country over the next couple of years.

The PM will launch the much-awaited service at the 6th Edition of India Mobile Congress 2022 to be held from October 1-4, at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi.

Besides powering ultra-low latency connections, which allow downloading full-length high-quality video or movie to a mobile device in a matter of seconds (even in crowded areas), 5G can enable solutions such as e-health, connected vehicles, more-immersive augmented reality, and metaverse experiences, life-saving use cases, and advanced mobile cloud gaming, among others.

India's biggest ever auction of telecom spectrum held recently had received a record Rs 1.5 lakh crore of bids, with Mukesh Ambani's Jio cornering nearly half of all the airwaves sold with an Rs 88,078 crore bid.

The government has given a target of 80 percent coverage of 5G telecom services in the country in a short timeframe, Union Minister for Communications, Electronics & Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw had earlier said.