Ericsson calls for spectrum price reduction, speeding up airwave availability

Swedish telecommunications equipment maker Ericsson on Monday urged the government to cut spectrum prices in India and speed up the process to make them available to service providers.

At the fourth India Mobile Congress on Tuesday, Ericsson Head (Southeast Asia, Oceania and India) Nunzio Mirtillo said that an encouraging policy framework will help telecom operators to switch to the 5G network.

I strongly encourage India to prioritize actions to incentivize investment in digital infrastructure, including making spectrum more affordable and speeding up spectrum availability, Mirtillo said.

Telecom operators can start 5G services in India once the appropriate wave frequencies have been allocated to them by the government.

Spectrum auctions in India were held annually between 2012 and 2016. No auctions have taken place in the past four years.

The government has started the spectrum auction process, but has not specified when the sale will begin.

In September, Reliance Jio, headed by Mukesh Ambani, also wrote to Telecommunications Secretary Anshu Prakash to question the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) rationale for suspending the policy of annual spectrum auctions, and said the sale of waves should take place at the earliest to meet the demand for data services.

Mirtillo said that currently India has the highest average traffic per smartphone user per month, at 15.7 GB per month, and the average monthly mobile data usage per smartphone continues to show growth. robust in India.

Beyond the consumer and application experience, I am confident that we are likely to find more transformative and relevant India use cases for India, where 5G network speed, latency and security will be. essential, Mirtillo said.

He added that based on its technology leadership and experience with 5G deployments around the world, Ericsson is well positioned to support India on its 5G journey. “We are ready to help our customers ‘turn on’ 5G, as soon as they are ready to do so.”

Ericsson claims to supply telecommunications equipment made in India to the telecommunications service.

We were the first telecommunications supplier to start manufacturing in India, in 1994. We manufacture advanced telecommunications equipment, including 4G and 5G radios, in our factory in Pune, and export 5G radios from China. India, Mirtillo said to me.