On Saturday 30th July, Ashwini Vaishnaw, the minister of communications, announced that the government has received offers for 5G spectrum totaling around $19 billion, and that the bidding will likely go on for some more time in the foreseeable future. On Sunday, the auction opened its sixth day of bidding after participants including Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel placed bids totaling 1,49,966 crore during first 5 days. He further went on to claim that the way things are looking as of now, the government might be able to launch 5G in India full-fledged by October this year.
In a press briefing, Vaishnav said, ““The 5G auction shows that the industry wants to expand. It has come out of problems and is getting into a growth phase. The auction results are very good, close to Rs 1,49,966 crore has been committed by the industry for buying the spectrum.”
Following a strong start on Tuesday, when participants invested 1.45 lakh crore on the inaugural day, the figures gradually increased on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday as Jio and Airtel participated in competitive bidding for the 1800 Megahertz in the UP East circle. Reliance Jio, owned by India’s richest Mukesh Ambani, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, and a division of Adani Enterprises, owned by billionaire Gautam Adani, are competing for the 5G spectral range, which provides speeds that are roughly 10 times speedier than 4G, better ping connectivity, and the ability for interconnected devices to communicate and send data in real-time.
In contrast to the previous norm, when auction has traditionally actually occurred from Monday through Saturday, seven new rounds of auction were performed on Saturday, and bidding continued into Sunday. About 71% of the total spectrum put up for sale has been tentatively sold as of Friday.
According to Economic Times, analysts estimate that Reliance Jio’s spectrum expenditure has reached Rs 84,000 crore so far while Bharti Airtel’s stood at Rs 46,000 crore and Vi’s to be around Rs 18,500 crore.
Vaishnav also emphasized that the Fifth Generation, or 5G, would empower alternatives like e-health, smart vehicles, extra interactive virtual reality and virtual world perceptions, life-saving utilisation instances, and improved wireless cloud gaming, among others, in addition to propelling super low latency connections that allow users to download super high quality clips or films to a mobile phone inside a matter of a few seconds (even now in congested places).