Budget 2023: India to set up 100 5G labs to develop new apps, services

With the 5G roll-out now gaining momentum in India, the Centre on Wednesday announced to set up 100 labs in the top engineering institutions to develop 5G apps and services.

India rolled out 5G services in October last year and several hundred cities and towns now have 5G services, courtesy Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel.

"To realise new opportunities, business models and employment potential, the 5G labs will cover applications such as smart classrooms, precision farming, intelligent transport systems and healthcare applications," said Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her Union Budget 2023-24 speech.

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The rollout of 5G services can unleash new economic opportunities and help the country leapfrog the traditional barriers to development, spur innovations by startups and business enterprises, and advance the 'Digital India' vision, the Economic Survey for 2022-23 had said on Tuesday.

The Survey said that 5G could impact consumers directly through higher data transfer speeds and lower latency, "and use cases developed by telcos and start-ups in education, health, worker safety and smart agriculture, among others, are now being deployed across the country".

"The massive wave of digitisation, increased penetration of smartphones, and adoption of technology have opened the doors for both traditional and new-age sectors," it said.

According to Prabhu Ram, Head-Industry Intelligence Group, CMR, the proposal to set-up 100 labs for developing 5G applications at Indian engineering institutions "is a step in the right direction to realize new opportunities that 5G posits, and develop India-specific 5G use cases for education, healthcare and agriculture, among others".

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