Stressing that the entire 6 GHz band should be delicensed for WiFi services, the tech industry has highlighted that enough spectrum in various bands has already been provided for 5G and for future needs. It added that the international telecommunication union<\/a> (ITU) is deliberating on allocating spectrum in 7-24 GHz bands as well as in 4800 MHz band for 5G.
In a letter to K Rajaraman, secretary, Department of Telecommunications<\/a> (DoT) dated March 29, the Broadband India Forum<\/a> (BIF) pressed its demands for delicensing the 6 GHz, so that affordable broadband can be provided to rural and remote areas of the country using WiFi technologies.
“At the outset, it needs to be emphatically stated that there are no references to 5G deployment using the 6 GHz spectrum band anywhere in the world. Being a globally harmonised 3GPP technology, 5G is required to be deployed in globally harmonised spectrum bands for optimal use and efficiency. 6 Ghz spectrum band is not one such band,” BIF President TV Ramachandran said in the letter, a copy of which has been seen by ET.
BIF counts the likes of Amazon<\/a>, Google<\/a>, Meta, Qualcomm<\/a>, TCS, Intel, Cisco and Microsoft<\/a> as its members.
The BIF’s reaction comes against demands by telecom operators Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio Infocomm and Vodafone Idea, who want the 6 GHz band to be auctioned, saying it is useful for commercial deployment of 5G services as well as for 5.5G and 6G in the future.
At present, the 6 GHz band is partly used for Indian Space Research Organisation satellite operations. The prize 6 GHz offers is huge. It can support internet speeds of up to 10 Gbps, similar to 5G speeds, or up to 100 times faster internet speed than 4G.
According to telcos, WiFi services offered by technology companies on 6 GHz would be similar to the connectivity services that telcos offer. But they would use spectrum that is practically free and without any regulatory burden of, say, licence fees and security compliances, thus upending the principle of ‘same service, same rules.’
The tech industry, however, feels otherwise.
BIF said ITU has initiated preliminary studies on the use of a portion of the 6 GHz band for 5G purposes in Region 1 (which includes the Americas and UK), and the outcomes of these studies are expected to be revealed at the upcoming World Radio Conference (WRC-23) later in Q4 this year. “But it is worth noting that the US regulator, FCC, was one of the earliest countries to delicense the 6 GHz band in April 2020. Since then, more than 50 countries have followed suit. While a majority of them have delicensed the entire 1200 Mhz in the 6 GHz band, some countries including the EU have delicensed the lower part of the band”.
The tech industry group noted that with the availability and benefits of superior and standardized WiFi technologies such as WiFi 6E and WiFi 7 in the 6 GHz band, many countries with much smaller requirements than India have delicensed the entire 6 GHz spectrum band for greater broadband proliferation through WiFi.
Ramachandran said to meet the visionary objective of achieving 50 million public WiFi hotspots by 2030 as part of the Bharat 6G Vision, India requires a significantly larger amount of delicensed spectrum than the measly 680 MHz currently available in the overcrowded 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz spectrum bands.
To serve a population of 1.4 billion consumers with 50 million WiFi hotspots spread at every nook and corner of the country, India needs much more delicensed spectrum to achieve its national goals,” BIF added.
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