In a letter to K Rajaraman, secretary, DoT, the Broadband India Forum sought delicensing the 6 GHz so that affordable broadband can be provided to rural and remote areas using WiFi technologies.
“At the outset, it needs to be emphatically stated that there are no references to 5G deployment using the 6 GHz spectrum band anywhere in the world. Being a globally harmonised 3GPP technology, 5G is required to be deployed in globally harmonised spectrum bands for optimal use and efficiency. The 6 Ghz spectrum band is not one such band,” BIF president TV Ramachandran said in the letter, a copy of which ET has seen.
BIF counts the likes of Amazon, Google, Meta, Qualcomm, TCS, Intel, Cisco, and Microsoft as its members.
The BIF’s reaction is in response to telecom operators Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio Infocomm and Vodafone Idea, who want the 6 GHz band to be auctioned, saying it is useful for commercial deployment of 5G services as well as for 5.5G and 6G in the future.
At present, the 6 GHz band is partly used for Indian Space Research Organisation satellite operations. The prize 6 GHz offers is huge. It can support internet speeds of up to 10 Gbps, like 5G speeds, or up to 100 times faster internet speed than 4G.
According to telcos, WiFi services offered by technology companies on 6 GHz would be similar to the connectivity services that telcos offer. But they would use spectrum that is practically free and without any regulatory burden of licence fees and security compliances, thus upending the principle of ‘same service, same rules.’
The tech industry, however, feels otherwise.
BIF said ITU has initiated preliminary studies on the use of a portion of the 6 GHz band for 5G purposes in Region 1 (which includes the Americas and UK), and the outcomes of these studies are expected to be revealed at the upcoming World Radio Conference later in Q4 this year.
“But it is worth noting that the US regulator, FCC, was one of the earliest countries to delicense the 6 GHz band in April 2020. Since then, more than 50 countries have followed suit. While a majority of them have delicensed the entire 1200 Mhz in the 6 GHz band, some countries including the EU have delicensed the lower part of the band,” BIF argued.
The tech industry group noted that with the availability and benefits of superior and standardized WiFi technologies such as WiFi 6E and WiFi 7 in the 6 GHz band, many countries with much smaller requirements than India have delicensed the entire 6 GHz spectrum band for greater broadband proliferation through WiFi.
ENDS.
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