The mega 5G auction that started on July 26 saw the four players Reliance Jio, Adani Group, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea — bidding for the right to offer 5G service in bands across frequencies for 20 years.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi would launch 5G services in India during the inauguration of the Indian Mobile Congress in Delhi on Saturday morning.
Let's take a look at the one big surprise this auction — the unexpectedly high demand for the 700 Mega Hertz (MHz) spectrum.
The auction was held in the low (600 MHz, 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2300 MHz), mid (3300 MHz), and high (26 GHz) frequency bands, with most of the bids concentrated on the mid, high and 700 MHz bands.
What are these different bands?
Basically, 5G is the fifth generation of mobile connectivity and follows the first generation (GPRS), the second generation (EDGE), the third generation (3G), and the fourth generation (4G or LTE). Currently, most countries in the world—including ours—are still on 4G;
some have already jumped to 5G, while others are about to.
High-frequency bands offer higher speeds but are constrained by a smaller coverage area. Conversely, low-frequency bands offer comparatively slower speeds but a much wider coverage area — ideal for a country like India.
For this reason alone, 700 MHz is considered a premium band, commanding a higher price — the reason it went unsold in the auctions in 2021 and 2016. According to chipset maker Qualcomm, 700 MHz can achieve more than 300 Mbps of download speed in trial conditions. Even so, it surprised several observers that the 700 MHz had so much play during the auction. To put this in perspective, 700 MHz is among the lowest-frequency 5G bands, while 4G frequencies are typically between 700 and 2,500 MHz.
Nitin Soni, a senior director at Fitch Ratings, said, "So, there is a lot of activity on the 700 MHz, which is a bit surprising. We thought most of the activity would be on the C-Band, which is 3 GHz, and also on the 26 GHz band. But I think because the telcos also have an incentive to lower their spectrum usage charges, the activity is a lot higher in 700 MHz."
The highest band on offer, the 26 GHz frequency, offers speeds over 1 Gbps but is constrained to a coverage area of a couple of kilometres, and even trees have been known to disrupt coverage.
But if what Soni says is true, and most telecom service providers opt for the 700 MHz band, then what we will essentially get is a slightly faster version of 4G. But the 700 MHz band helps service providers build a cost-efficient 5G network as the low frequency leads to wider coverage, and it also has the bonus of a high threshold for disruption — it can penetrate buildings while, as noted above, higher frequencies are befuddled by a few trees in their coverage area.
However, regardless of when the 5G services are rolled out, Soni feels it could take up to a couple of years for wider adoption. "In the initial few years, the 5G use case business will evolve. At first, there will be applications which will need 5G speed. In a couple of years, 5G adoption will start to increase in India," he said.
First Published: Jul 27, 2022 6:32 PM IST
