India to roll out 6G by end of decade

India is aiming to roll out 6G technology by the end of the decade, as the country looks to roll out 5G in the next few months.

The government has launched a task force dedicated to the 6G launch, prime minister Narendra Modi revealed at an event yesterday where he inaugurated the country’s first 5G testbed. However, Modi didn’t specify what 6G technology would be used for or elaborate on what 6G will do for the country.

The prime minister added that 5G will contribute $450 billion to India’s economy. He said that 5G will bring positive changes in the governance of the country, ease of living, and ease of doing business. He expects this to boost growth in every sector, including agriculture, health, education, and infrastructure.

As he expects 5G to not only increase the speed of the Internet but also the speed of progress and employment, he underlined there’s a need for collective efforts from both the government and industry to roll it out rapidly.

Referring to the previous government, Modi pointed out how the 2G era symbolised policy paralysis and corruption. He emphasised this era has been left behind, and the country has moved rapidly from 3G to 4G, and now 5G and 6G.

“This transition is happening very smoothly, with a lot of transparency,” said Modi.

The Indian prime minister also highlighted that there has been an emphasis on mobile manufacturing in the country to make mobiles accessible to poor families. He underlined that mobile manufacturing units increased from two to over 200 and the country is the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturing hub.

“Where we used to import phones for our needs, today we are setting new records for mobile phone exports,” said Modi.

Despite the country looking to establish 6G in 2030, it has received criticism for its 5G deployment. In February 2021, a parliamentary committee found that India wasn’t prepared to roll out 5G due to multiple issues, as reported by Forbes India.

It stated that 5G will be rolled out for specific use cases by the end of 2021 or early 2022, but 4G should continue in the country for at least another five to six years. There were worries that India would miss the benefits of 5G due to a lack of preparedness, spectrum issues, inadequate use-case development, and uncertainty around the sale of radio waves for 5G.

What is 6G?

As you might have guessed, 6G is the sixth generation of wireless mobile technology. This is a step up from the latest available generation, 5G, which is still being rolled out all over the world.

6G is expected to improve on the capabilities of its predecessors, offering faster and more advanced mobile broadband for users. Despite this, we don’t know exactly what form it will take.

One main feature of 6G is that it will be fast. It could offer peak data rates 50 times faster than 5G, at 1,000 Gbits/sec, according to Samsung. Others have described it as delivering information instantly, or at the speed of human thought.