5G rollout could take 6-8 months
Telecom gear makers say it will take six to eight months for the top 10 cities to have a reasonable coverage of 5G network services.
The amount of coverage will depend on the telecom company’s strategy, whether it wants to concentrate on a few cities and go for more coverage or whether to offer it to more cities with less coverage.
The estimated target is to give reasonable coverage in the top 10 cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, and Hyderabad, for which radios and equipment for 30,000 towers will be required for coverage, which could only be done in six to eight months.
A senior telecom gear major executive said, “These ten cities are all the telcos are concentrating on to begin with as there is a large 4G customer base in them as well as consumers with 5G ready mobile devices. After that the numbers for potential users of 5G falls.”
In a city like Delhi, depending on what telcos are planning, powering 3,000 sites with 5G could be enough to cover a third of the city. There are 9,000 sites to cover, but the number of sites will go up very quickly to build more capacity as the number of subscribers go up.
A telecom gear maker said it has prepared plans to air freight enough radios for 500 to 1,000 sites, i.e., around 5,000-7,000 radios, to begin with for its clients. The radios can be deployed only in a few cities and that too, in a limited area. The roll-out is expected to begin from November.
See What’s Next in Tech With the Fast Forward Newsletter
Tweets From @varindiamag
Nothing to see here - yet
When they Tweet, their Tweets will show up here.