Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Sunday, said that at least four cities of Odisha will get access to 5G services by March 2023 while 80 percent area of the state will get 5G by the end of next year. While he didn’t specify as to which cities will get 5G, Bhubaneswar, the Capital of Odisha is highly expected to be part of the list.
“In the first phase, four-five cities of Odisha will get 5G services by March 2023, and by the end of next year, around 80 per cent area of the state will be covered,” said Vaishnaw, the Union minister for railways, communications, electronics and information technology at the sidelines of a railways event in Odisha.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the launch of 5G services in India on October 1. Currently, private telecom operator Bharti Airtel have already begun the rollout of services in the country. On the other hand, Reliance Jio is yet to begin the rollout of its 5G services in Delhi, Mumbai, Varanasi and Kolkata. Airtel has so far offered the service across eight cities — Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Nagpur, Siliguri and Varanasi.
We reported a while back that Jio’s 5G tariffs will remain the same as 4G ones until the rollout is complete. The same goes for Airtel as well. Apart from that, Vodafone Idea is also one of the operators who participated in the 5G spectrum auction and is yet to announce its rollout plans for the service.
For Jio users, Jio True 5G Welcome Offer is being launched in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Varanasi for Jio users, by invitation. Jio has also made a bold claim, saying that these customers will get unlimited 5G data with up to 1 Gbps+ speeds. Further, the Beta trial service for other cities will be announced progressively as 5G gets ready for these cities.