5G will touch and change lives like never before, catalyse higher overall economic growth: Trai

The advent of 5G will touch and change lives “like never before” and has the potential to act as catalyst to higher overall economic growth of the country, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said. In a white paper on ‘Enabling 5G in India’, the telecom regulator said while 5G will bring new capabilities to fore in areas such as telesurgery and autonomous vehicles, harnessing its full potential would require substantial amount of investment for roll-out of services. The paper said spectrum availability is one of the most important issues in the 5G vision.

“In order to realise the potential of 5G; it is crucial that enough spectrum is made available in appropriate frequency bands,” Trai said. “Use of spectrum within three different frequency range (sub-1 GHz, 1-6 GHz, above 6 GHz) support varying requirements of all use cases. Spectrum sharing technique such as licensed shared access (LSA) improves spectrum utilisation. Also, unlicensed spectrum coupled with licensed spectrum increase the access network capacity and improves users’ wireless experience,” it said.

Government agencies in India are assigned spectrum on an administrative basis, Trai said noting that spectrum audit can help in identification of unutilised or inefficiently utilised spectrum. Trai also said after such identification, LSA — a concept to dynamically share a spectrum band, whenever and wherever it is unused by the incumbent users — can be leveraged for optimal use of spectrum.

“All the government agencies in India are assigned spectrum administratively. Spectrum audit will help in identification of unutilised or inefficiently utilised spectrum,” it added.