Local carriers Airtel and Jio said they currently provide 5G services nationwide
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) is considering whether to require local carriers to display the coverage map on their websites so that their customers know where they will get 5G or 4G services, local newspaper The Economic Times reported.
The report noted that despite the fact that local carriers Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio Infocomm have claimed nationwide 5G rollouts, mobile users continue to see 4G indicators on their mobile phones, even in large cities across India.
The regulator is also working on strengthening quality of service (QoS) benchmarks for mobile services. Directives on that subject will be issued to local carriers by April or May, according to the report, which cited people with knowledge of the matter.
“Consumers don’t know about the coverage of service providers. There are some areas where there is no connectivity, even in cities. As consumers, people have the right to know about the coverage of a telco and the firms must display it on their website,” a Trai official reportedly said.
In addition, the regulator wants to ensure that operators report if any of the approximately 400,000 5G base tower stations deployed nationwide by them are down, said another official. “If a particular site is down, it has to be reported because it impacts the availability of the network in that particular area,” the official said.
The report also noted that the telecommunications services regulator is considering whether imposition of financial penalties on telecom companies should be increased for not meeting the quality of service requirements at state and district levels.
Currently, the quality of service is measured at the telecom circle, or regional, level in India –so, even if a few sites remain down for a long time, the outage is not necessarily reflected in the data at the regional level. The telecom industry is opposing Trai’s plans to measure data at state and district levels—because, they argue, mobile networks are rolled out by telecom circle, and the software system works accordingly.
Local operator Reliance Jio Infocomm says that it has already completed the rollout of 5G technology in India. Reliance Jio Infocomm has been rapidly expanding its 5G network using Standalone (SA) architecture since October 2022.
Meanwhile, rival telco Bharti Airtel previously said it was on track to cover the entire country with 5G technology by this month.
Last week, the government of India confirmed that the upcoming 5G spectrum auction is slated to start on May 20.
The Department of Telecommunication (DoT) issued the notice inviting application (NIA), which outlines the rules of the process. In the upcoming auction, 5G airwaves in 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2.1 GHz, 2.3 GHz, 2.5 GHz, 3.3 GHz and 26 GHz bands will be put up for sale.
According to sources with knowledge of the matter, the auction is expected to only draw a few bids from Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea (Vi) for renewing their frequencies.
