This telco will be the first to roll out 5G in India

The state-owned telecom firm BSNL expects to start 5G services in the country together with its global launch, a senior official said today. "The moment 5G is launched anywhere in the world, most probably 5G will be launched in India also. I can use the word "nobody before BSNL will launch (5G services) in the country", BSNL Chief General Manager Anil Jain told reporters here.

Asked on the timeline, he said "we can't give any timeline. Though, world over people are talking to launch 5G by June 2020. But, there aresome expectations that we may see 5G (launch) in 2019 itself," he said.

"We have missed the 4G bus.. BSNL doesn't want to miss the 5G bus in the entire country," he said. As far as 5G is concerned, Jain said BSNL has taken a lead in this and pointed out that "to do the learning and testing on the ground and making our system compatible with 5G, BSNL has signed agreement with several international operators including Nokia, NTT Advance Technology."

He further said internationally, there were several recommendations coming for 5G and BSNL along with these companies was testing those recommendations and working on its own network.

"World over the same thing is happening. In Germany, China, US and India lot of tests have been conducted," he said.

On BSNL's new offering 'Wings', which will be rolled out from August 1 across the country, Jain said "through this the target is to have 50 lakh new customers by the end of this fiscal".

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Earlier Jain announced launch of several promotional plans under Broadband, landline and for FTTH network.

"With these new offers we are hopeful to add 15 lakh new customers for landline and broadband connections against the current customer base of 60 lakh while we are expecting to add 30 lakh more for fiber broadband from the existing 2.3 lakh fibre connections pan-India by March 2019," he added.