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The government has set up a high-level forum to evaluate and approve a roadmap and action-plan to roll out 5G services for consumers in India by 2020.
The forum includes ministries of telecom, information and technology and science and technology and has set aside a corpus of Rs 500 crore for research and development.
Meanwhile, Chinese telecom gear vendor ZTE has already started 5G-related activities with the pre-5G trials with Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Reliance Jio (owned by Reliance Industries). The company is looking to focus on advanced technologies to grab an opportunity in India, says a report by The Economic Times.
While universal 5G standards have not been agreed upon yet, various countries are preparing to roll out 5G services. Some of them are aiming to launch it as early as 2018.
Here's a status check on 5G technology plans of some of these countries:
South Korea
The country's largest telecom company KT Corp has announced plans to launch its 5G network during the Winter Olympics in February 2018. The company has reportedly completed successful trials of the system.
United States
The country's Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Spectrum Frontiers Order has already laid down groundwork for 5G technology use by 2020.
In July 2016, the Commission began creating regulations for 5G technology and opened the high-band spectrum for the technology.
Leading telecom giants AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint are already testing 5G components.
Verizon has plans to run a pilot test project for selected customers across 11 cities in the US this year 2017.
Japan
The country’s communications ministry has met three of the biggest domestic carriers including NTT Docomo, KDDI Corp. and SoftBank Mobile.
Japan's communications ministry has said that 5G technology will be nearly 10 times faster than 4G technology. Japan is aiming to launch 5G services by 2020.
Sweden and Estonia
Two of Scandinavia's largest telecommunications companies Telia and Ericsson have announced deployment of 5G services in Swedish capital Stockholm and Estonian capital Tallinn by 2018.
China, too, is set to launch 5G services commercially by 2020.
(Disclaimer: Reliance Industries Ltd. is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd)
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