The government on Tuesday set up High-Level Forum on 5G India 2020 with a mandate to lay down a roadmap for the rollout of the technology by 2020.

The Centre will spend ₹500 crore in research and development for the same.

“We can’t be behind in 5G when many other countries are going on 5G technology. With this forum, India too will be successful in launching 5G by 2020,” Manoj Sinha, Communications Minister, told reporters here.

The ₹500 crore will be spent by three ministries — Telecom, Electronics and IT (MeitY), and Science and Technology.

For India, 5G provides an opportunity for the industry to reach out to global markets and consumers to gain with the economies of scale.

Worldwide, countries have launched similar forums and thus India had joined the race in 5G technology.

“We are open to collaboration with them,” the Minister said.

The terms of reference for the forum are to evaluate and approve roadmaps and action plans for 5G in India by 2020.

Goals “The primary goals of the forum are to achieve early deployment of 5G in India and a globally competitive product development and manufacturing ecosystem targeting 50 per cent of the Indian market and 10 per cent of the global market over the next 5-7 years,” Sinha said.

The forum will also work towards accelerated deployment of 5G for specific use cases in India that will include development of roadmaps related to emerging technologies, testing and trials.

Broadband infrastructure “We will leverage 5G technology for the deployment of next-generation broadband infrastructure, through which we will aim to have 100 per cent coverage of 10 Gbps broadband across urban India and 1Gbps across the rural India,” a senior official said.

The ‘High-Level 5G India 2020 Forum’ includes three Secretaries of key ministries/departments — Telecom, MeitY and Ministry of Science and Technology — and also comprises renowned experts such as A Paulraj, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University, US; Gururaj Deshpande, Chairman, Sycamore Networks, Sandstone (US); CEOs of the ICT industry; Telecom Standard Development Society, India; professors from IIT-Madras, IIT-Mumbai, IIT-Delhi, IIT-Hyderabad, IISc-Bangalore; and stakeholders from industry associations.

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