The Silicon Review ^Asia

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is now batting an eye on the additionally available spectrum to meet telecom companies' demand for a larger chunk of airwaves to roll out 5G services. According to the recent reports given by the Telecommunication sector, India doesn't have more bandwidth to meet the 5G demand. Currently, the spectrum available for 5G services is 175 MHz, with a cap of 50 MHz per company.

Meanwhile, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd has urged the government to initiate the process for auctioning airwaves at the earliest to support its nation-building policies and to help meet the rising demand for data services. "Some of the operators are merely interested in perpetuating their 2G technologies and monetize the old equipment as much as possible. We submit that the nation-building policies should not be kept hostage to vested interests of such a few organizations," Jio said.

Along with Jio, other telecom firms like Bharti Airtel Ltd and Vodafone Idea Ltd (Vi) has urged the government to initiate the process for auctioning airwaves at the earliest to support its nation-building policies and to help meet the rising demand for data services. The companies have also stated that further delay in spectrum auction will hurt investor confidence and lead to considerable government revenues losses.