It’s not too common to hear that a band of wireless spectrum is “close to our hearts” from the lectern of a hotel ballroom in Central Delhi. But the emerging interest in getting access to the 6 gigahertz (GHz) band — which ranges from 5,925 to 7,125 megahertz (MHz) — is pitting wireless telecom operators against fixed line Internet Service Providers (ISPs), with both groups keen to lay claim on a band of spectrum that could enable the next generation of 5G, or WiFi — or as some modestly insisted, both.
The Broadband India Forum (BIF), which represents tech giants and some ISPs, on Tuesday held an event, sponsored in part by Meta, that advanced this demand. 6 GHz delicensing would benefit fixed line broadband providers and software giants, as some of the latter try to get into the public WiFi hotspot space. Telecom operators, meanwhile, worry that since India’s mobile data consumption is growing so rapidly — Nokia estimated that data consumption had increased over sixfold in the last five years — that they need to earmark further spectrum for licensed use on their networks.