The ministry of communications, announced the government's decision to offer the indigenous 5G test bed set up for experimenting and demonstrating the applications and use cases of 5G products in the country, to use free of cost to the government-recognized MSMEs and startups for the next six months, till January 2023. The test bed was launched by Prime Minister in May this year for startups, MSMEs and other small players.
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"The development of this indigenous test bed is a key milestone for India's becoming self-reliant in the 5G technology domain and now leading towards 5G Aatmanirbhar Bharat. This has resulted in huge cost efficiency and reduced design time due to which Indian 5G products are likely to become market competitive globally," said ministry in a statement.
The use for other 5G stakeholders which includes industry, academia, service providers, government bodies and others, will be available at a very nominal rate.
"Department of telecommunications (DoT) has strongly urged all 5G stakeholders which includes, industry, academia, service providers, R&D institutions, government bodies, equipment manufacturers and others to utilize the 5G test bed facilities and expertise to test and facilitate the speedy development and deployment of their products in the network," said the telecom ministry in a statement.
As per earlier reports, in March 2018, the telecom ministry had approved a financial grant for the multi-institute collaborative project to set up the indigenous 5G test bed in India with a total cost of INR 224 crore. The government recently concluded a 5G spectrum auction worth INR 1.53 lakh crore. Ashwini Vaishnaw, telecom minister, said that 5G service in India is most likely to start by the telecom operators in the first week of October, 2022.