India's own 5G technology, TSDSI 5Gi, has completed the evaluation phase of ITU's International Mobile Telecommunications 2020 (IMT-2020) vision and now conforms with the stringent performance requirement. This means that India's contribution is now being accepted as the global 5G standard. The Telecom Standards Development Society of India (TSDSI), India’s body for telecom standards, said that global vendors will now need to make handsets and base stations conforming to this standard. The other two technologies that have completed the evaluation phase are 3GPP 5G-SRIT and 3GPP 5G-RIT submitted by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has formed eight working groups to create a roadmap for the deployment of fifth-generation or 5G in different sectors such as agriculture, fintech, transportation and education. The working groups include members from Chinese vendor company Huawei, who will look at healthcare and fintech sectors, according to a notification by the department. “The objective is to conduct a study and to produce a report with actionable points which brings out the use of 5G mobile technology in the respective sectors and how global use cases of 5G mobile technology in these sectors can be utilised and adapted to the Indian requirements," the DoT said in a notification.

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will approach the Union Cabinet for approval of the structure of production-link incentives for telecom gear makers in India. In November, the Cabinet approved an incentive of Rs 12,195 crore (€1.5 bn) to introduce production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for telecom and network products. The Digital Communications Commission on December 1 approved the proposal for the scheme. The product lines that have been specified include core transmission equipment; 4G/5G, next-generation radio access network and wireless equipment; and access and customer premises equipment (CPE)

The Department of Telecommunications is working on identifying additional spectrum to address Indian telecom operators' demand for a "larger chunk" of airwaves to rollout 5G services. DoT has allocated the 3300 MHz to 3600 MHz band for 5G services. Worldwide, the allocation of bands for 5G services is from 3300 MHz to 4200 MHz. India doesn’t have that much bandwidth, so we are looking for an additional 150 MHz,” a senior official said. Telcos had previously urged the telecom department to ensure optimum availability of spectrum in the 3300-3600 mid-band earmarked for 5G services.

Flying base stations are a feature that enhances wireless capacity and coverage footprint on the ground with ultra-dense traffic demands, to meet the requirements of 5G and B5G or beyond 5G cellular communications.  Researchers from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur have developed a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) assisted communication infrastructure for 5G that can serve as an air-borne mobile telecom tower during emergency situations. The system includes an Android-based application fitted to a fleet of drones which are programmed to create emergency communication networks by extending cellular network coverage from the closest available mobile tow.