\"For the field trials, planning and spectrum are required... trials will only take place in the second half of this year. At the same time, we will have clarity on 5G standards as Release 16 is currently being worked on at 3GPP<\/a>,\" Sanjay Malik, vice president and head of India market at Nokia, told ET in an interaction.
Nokia is currently working with Bharti Airtel and state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd to test 5G technology, and define the new technology roadmap as part of separate agreements.
Nokia and other vendors like Ericsson, Huawei<\/a>, Samsung, Cisco, and NEC had last year got permission from the telecom department to conduct 5G field trials in India. Nokia has already submitted their proposals for doing trials in the Delhi-NCR region and Bengaluru.
Gear vendors and telecom operators are awaiting clarity over the allocation of free spectrum for 5G field trials as they want the spectrum for at least a year. The wireless planning wing of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had previously made it clear that free spectrum for 5G trials can be allocated only for 90 days, citing current rules.
The government is confident of rolling out 5G in tandem with global markets in 2020 and is making all efforts to keep the timeline for the next-generation technology, which could have an economic impact of more than $1 trillion in the country.
Meanwhile, Nokia's annual Mobile Broadband India Traffic (MBiT) Index study revealed that 4G LTE contributed to 92% of total data traffic in 2018 in India even as the overall data traffic grew 109%. The 4G growth came at the cost of 3G data traffic, which has recorded a marginal decrease in 2018.
By the end of 2018, there were more than five times as many 4G subscribers as there are 3G subscribers.
The average data usage grew by 69% in 2018 to touch 10GB per user per month in December 2018. Nokia said significant drop in data tariffs coupled with the availability of economical 4G devices led to the growth of the number of 4G subscribers by 137%.
Further, the widespread migration of users from 3G to 4G devices also contributed to the increase in the consumption of 4G data traffic in the country.\n
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