'No one has been able to deploy 4G'

NEW DELHI, INDIA: The delay in the auction of 3G spectrum has steered debate across the country whether India should skip 3G and leapfrog to 4G directly. But Satyen N Gupta, eminent telecom industry expert and ex-advisor to TRAI, says that no one has till date been able to deploy 4G technology.

“The ITU and IEEE have identified that 4G will have data download speed of 100 mega bit per second and it is completely based on IP technology. Though people may talk to have deployed or developed 4G, it is still '3.9G' technology,” said Gupta, in an interaction with CIOL.

There have been a number of claims on the deployment and development of 4G technology in some parts of the world but according to Gupta, in reality there is no equipment available.

“The equipment are under development. The deployment happened so far has seen data transfer speed of 70 mbps only, which is less than the expectation from 4G,” added Gupta.

4G technology as defined by IEEE will have download speed of 100 mbps whereas 3G can support speed up to 2 mbps.

Gupta is in favor that India should leapfrog to 4G and skip 3G as there had been too much delay in the auction of spectrum. He also mentioned that the present bandwidth that had been declared by the Department of Telecom (DoT) is enough to support 4G deployment.

“The 5Mhz for 3G can support 4G deployment but it is just enough. It requires 10 Mhz at least for proper operation of 4G. It can be done in the bandwidth that government has declared for BWA spectrum auction,” added Gupta.

Gupta expressed that the government should adapt technology-neutral stand for spectrum usage and let service providers decide whether they should go for 3G or 4G deployment.