Telecom service providers and other stakeholders across the board on Friday agreed on an action plan merge to 5Gi with the global standard on 5G, the Telecommunications Development Society of India (TSDSI) said. “With the broad support from many TSDSI member companies, as well as global cellular vendors and multiple operators, the key requirements and the next steps that will culminate in the merger of 5Gi into 5G, was endorsed as part of the 3GPP 5G standards,” the society said in a statement. 5Gi, an initiative of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) was planned as an indigenous technology that was to be developed jointly by the Indian Institutes of Technology at Madras and Hyderabad. Private telecom service providers had, however, opposed the plan and said it would be difficult to adopt a separate India standard for the technology as it would inflate their costs. The telcos had in their objections also said that adopting a separate 5G standard just for India would also result in increased costs of devices as specifically designed chip, which may not be compatible with global standards, would have to be installed. In December last year, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), the global body on 5G standards had given its nod to merge 5Gi and 5G on the condition that there would be no further updates to 5Gi.
