The fifth generation (5G) telecom services are likely to be launched in October this year in India.

This comes after the government successfully completed the spectrum auction mopping up over Rs 1.50 lakh crores in bids by four companies including Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Adani Data Networks on Monday.

Addressing a media briefing after the end of the bidding for 5G spectrum, Union Minister of Communications, Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw said, “Auction has been completed and in the next few days, till August 10, all formalities including approving and allocating the spectrum will be done.”

“It seems we would be able to launch 5G in the country by October. The ongoing 5G spectrum auction indicates that the country’s telecom industry has come a long way in 5G advancements,” the minister said.

Stating that the 5G rollout all over the world has been slow, he said, “We believe that we will probably buck the trend of having a much faster rollout of 5G compared to many other geographies since our other costs are significantly under control.”

He further said that as of Saturday, the government had fetched ₹1.49 lakh crore from 5G spectrum auction and expressed the confidence that this would cross ₹1.5 lakh crore.

According to reports, 13 cities across the country including Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Gandhinagar, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Jamnagar, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai and Pune will get 5G in the beginning.

The Union Minister further informed that a total 72,098 MHz of spectrum on offer, 51,236 MHz or around 71 per cent has been sold in the auction.

Total 40 rounds of bidding were conducted in the past seven days. The total value of the bid stands at Rs 1,50,173 crore.