Govt may take call on V-band, 6GHz band for Wi-Fi

The government is considering whether the V-band and the 6GHz band can be made available for Wi-Fi, a senior Department of Telecommunications (DoT) official said on Friday.

“Considerations for releasing the V-band and 6 GHz band are already being discussed,” said AK Tiwari, Member Technology, (DoT) at a virtual workshop by the ITU-APT Foundation of India (IAFI). “DoT is actively considering each part of the argument, and very soon, we will have the approval on the course of action”.

Tiwari added that even the 5GHz delicensed capacity is not fully exploited.

Regulations in India presently only permit Wi-Fi in 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands that have 600MHz available to all users, in contrast to more than 2GHz of spectrum required.

The 5925MHz-7025MHz band is currently allocated to fixed, mobile, and satellite services in India, as per the National Frequency Allocation Plan 2018.

Wi-Fi in the 6GHz band offers 1GHz of extra bandwidth, which is split into 14 channels of 80MHz each, or seven channels of 160MHz each.

“The 6GHz band is currently being used by satellites for broadcasting of TV channels. Therefore, we will need to study the coexistence of this band between satellites and Wi-Fi services so as to increase the economic value of this band by sharing and thus adding value to the country’s GDP,” said RK Saxena, Wireless Advisor to the government.

Tilak Raj Dua, Chairman, IAFI, and DG of Digital Infrastructure Providers Association (DIPA) noted that broadband networks should work in tandem with mobile networks. Talking about delicensing the spectrum required for broadband, he added, “Many countries have already delicensed 6 GHz for Wi-Fi. Therefore, India needs to follow the same.”

Bharat Bhatia, President of ITU-APT Foundation of India (IAFI) said that the present chunk of the delicensed spectrum falls short of India’s needs. Bhatia urged the government to delicense the 6GHz band from 5925 to 7025 MHz, and the V-band from 57 to 64 GHz.

With existing channels, the present use of Wi-Fi in India creates an economic value of about Rs 1.6 lakh crores per year, the New Delhi-based lobby group has previously said while citing a Wi-FI Alliances report which estimates the global economic value of Wi-Fi to reach Rs 362 lakh crores ($4.9 trillion) by 2025, up from Rs 232 lakh crores in 2021. TelecomTalk