India issues 5G trial license, but won't use Chinese network technology

The decision to exclude the Chinese manufacturer comes despite Huawei receiving permission last year to participate in India’s 5G trial phase. Ravi Shankar Prasad, the minister in charge of India’s telecom sector, said last year that “5G trials will be conducted with all vendors and operators”.

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The 5G trial will use Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and C-DOT kits instead of Chinese network equipment, the ministry said in a statement. In addition, one of the approved telecom companies, Reliance Jio, will use its own local technology for the trial.

The other telcos that received approval for the trial are Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and MTNL.

For the trials, the telecom companies will use experimental spectrum provided by the Indian government in various bands including mid-band, millimeter wave and sub-gigahertz bands. Telecom operators will also be allowed to use their own spectrum for 5G trials, including those they won in the country's latest spectrum auction two months ago.

The telecom ministry said part of the approval would be a requirement for conducting 5G trials in rural, semi-urban and urban environments so that the benefits of 5G technology are not limited to urban areas.

Another requirement is that the trials must be conducted on a non-commercial basis and must not be connected to any telecom company's existing network.

The ministry added that the objectives of the 5G trials include testing 5G spectrum propagation characteristics, especially in India; model tuning and evaluation of selected equipment and vendors; testing local technologies; testing applications such as telemedicine, tele-education and drone-based agricultural monitoring, among others; and testing 5G handsets and devices.

The trial approval comes six months after Reliance Industries CEO Mukesh Ambani vowed the telecom company would launch a commercial 5G network in the second half of 2021.

"I assure you that Jio will be the first to deliver the 5G revolution in India in the second half of 2021," Ambani said during his keynote address at the India Mobile Congress 2020.