Bhopal to become India’s first 5G enabled smart city
The Madhya Pradesh government has announced that Bhopal will be the first 5G smart city in India. The capital city of one of the largest states in India will launch 5G internet services in selected areas within the next four months. This will give citizens faster internet access. With this announcement, Bhopal has been added to the list of Indian cities like Mumbai, New Delhi, Lucknow and Bangalore where the telecom department has said that 5G services will be available first.
Bhopal will be the first city in India to offer 5G services to its citizens. The pilot project, which will be launched in the next four months, will involve a partnership between the government and one of India’s telecom companies to conduct 5G trials. However, it is not clear which company will be selected for the project.
In the February 2022 budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said that the commercial deployment of 5G services in India would begin by the end of 2022. The spectrum auction is likely to take place in the middle of this year, but there are no exact details. The Department of Telecom has confirmed that 5G trial sites have already been set up in selected cities. These cities are Gurugram, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Delhi, Jamnagar, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Pune and Gandhinagar. Bhopal was not included in the list, but the Madhya Pradesh government has announced it.
Leading Indian telecom companies Airtel, Jio and Vi India have not yet confirmed any details about the 5G trial sites in Bhopal. But in the meantime, all three companies are experimenting in other major cities. For example, Airtel last week said it was ready to launch 5G in India as soon as the spectrum auction takes place. Geo and Wii have similar plans.
The Indian market is already full of 5G phones at different price points. According to telecom companies, easy access to these phones will enable them to reach a wider customer base. Tariffs for these services are also likely to be in line with 4G plans. According to Airtel, 5G services are unlikely to charge customers a premium. This means that consumers do not have to pay extra to access 5G.
Pic Courtesy: google/ images are subject to copyright
