5G Will Benefit India's Village More

Urban users are eagerly waiting for 5G telecom services to take off, but its real impact would be felt in villages

- K. Sunil Thomas

A ‘virus’ started spreading through the air waves in India in the third week of May. No, not the novel coronavirus. A flood of social media messages, from WhatsApp, forwards to Facebook posts, saying that the new generation of ultrafast mobile technology, 5G, was responsible for the deadly second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in India.

One theory said that radiation from 5G base towers helped the spread of ‘corona’. Another said the strong radio waves were causing small changes to people’s bodies, making them more susceptible to the virus.

With local leaders and farmers' groups in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana pitching in with their fears and calling for a halt to 5G trials, the government was forced to come up with an explanation. While the ministry of information and broadcasting did a fact check and stamped the rumours fake, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) issued a statement saying that there was “no connection between 5G technology and the outbreak of Covid-19”. The Uttar Pradesh Police ordered all district commissioners to crack down on those spreading 5G conspiracy theories. The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) called on states, particularly Haryana, to quell the rumours as they were getting out of hand.

The irony is that 5G trials, or even the auctioning of the spectrum to start the service, are yet to start in India! Because of many delays, the government’s clearance for trials—by telcos Reliance Jio, Airtel, Vi (formerly Vodafone-Idea) and MTNL— came through only a week ago.