Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday said that 5g services will be hoepfully launched in India by October 12. Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the speed of 5G will become 10 times faster than 4G.

“We are planning to roll out 5G services rapidly, telecom operators are working in that regard and installations are being done,” said Ashwini Vaishnav.

“Hopefully, we should be launching 5G services by October 12 and then would further scale up in cities and towns,” Vaishnav ws quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

If reports are to believed then 5G service will start in a phase-wise manner. During the first phase, only 13 select cities will get fast-speed internet service.

Ahmedabad

Bengaluru

Chandigarh

Chennai

Delhi

Gandhinagar

Gurugram

Hyderabad

Jamnagar

Kolkata

Lucknow

Mumbai

Pune

Vaishnaw last week asked telecom service providers to gear up for the 5G launch post the issuance of spectrum allocation letters. The DoT has received payment of around Rs 17,876 crore from service providers — Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, Adani Data Networks and Vodafone Idea for the spectrum they won in a recent auction.

In a first, the Department of Telecom (DoT) issued spectrum assignment letters on the same day the successful bidders of radio waves made upfront payments.

The government also recently said that it does not intend to interfere in the pricing or rollout of such services. K. Rajaraman, secretary in the Department of Telecommunications said.