Bangladesh Telecommuni-cation Regulatory Commission (BTRC) yesterday said the licence for 5G services will be allocated to the mobile operators by fourth quarter of 2020 after completion of the guidelines by the next year’s first quarter.

BTRC disclosed the primary decision of making 5G internet service available in the country at a seminar styled  Seminar on 5G in Bangladesh at Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh (IEB). BTRC also share their target to cover the enter country up to upzila and growth center level with this mobile broadband by 2026.

The service will be available by last quarter of next year or first quarter of 2021, said Md Shahidul Alam, director general of spectrum management division of the telecom regulator.

Already a committee formed by BTRC, is working to make a guideline and they will fix the spectrum price issues with consolation of the government, Alam said.

“Before launching the 5G service in the country we also need to address lots of issues related with it and we will try to solve it in between the guideline formulation time,” he also added. BTRC team is also seriously considering to launch 5G service in 2.6 and 3.5 Gigahertz band spectrum. However they haven’t make any decision for spectrum prices as well.

Posts and Telecommunication Minister Mustafa Jabbar, who was present at the seminar, said 5G and fourth industrial

revolution are interrelated and without 5G this country can’t enter into the upcoming industrialisation.

“5G is not only related with telecom services, it will also help boost digitisation and automation in every sector.”

Lots of people also think that service quality of 2G or even 3G and 4G is not satisfactory so what they will do with the 5G?

“Here my answer is there is no relation with 2G, 3G and 4G with 5G. 5G is a highway of industrialization and if we to take the lead of 4.0 industrial revolution we need to launch it,” said Jabbar.

He said this is not all about mobile technology rather all the upcoming services like education, health, agriculture and other services will be related

with it.

The government introduced 4G services in 2018 and 3G in 2013 where about six crore 3G service users and about two crore mobile numbers are connected with 4G service.

Jabbar said 5G is not related with previous services, even it is not only internet and voice

call bases services. “5G is an ecosystem and we are one of the first countries that decided to accept it.”

BTRC Chairman Md Jahurul Haque said in 5G era machine will communicate with machine and person will play behind it.

“In Bangladesh already artificial intelligences uses started and 5G will help to run the AI and Internet of Things and robotics easily that can boost the productivity,” said Haque.

Telecom secretary Ashoke Kumar Biswas, BTRC commissioner Md Aminul Hassan also spoke in the seminar. Before that three presentation also presented by Abdus Salam, country manager of Ericssion Bangladesh, Jerry Wang Shiwu, chief technology officer of Huawei Technologies (Bangladesh) Limited and Reduan Hasan Khan, a general manager of Grameenphone.