The last few days have seen senior Indian government officials, including the telecom minister, mention 6G on more than one occasion.

The minister, in fact, remarked that India will get 6G by 2023 and 2024. He added that the country would develop telecom equipment and software for 6G.

This sounds far-fetched at best, considering India's progress in 5G. The first 5G commercial services were launched more than two years back, but with no sign of 5G in India till now, this seems to be a case of wishful thinking.

I believe in fairies

In India, there is a lot of difference between what the administration says and what actually happens on the ground.

The government started talking about 5G in 2017 when a high-level committee was established to help India set up a 5G roadmap. Then there was talk of setting up a 5G testbed in a collaboration between the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), premier technology institutes and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc).

There is no denying that India has made some headway in developing homegrown 5G by coming up with the 5Gi standards.

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Media reports suggest that the standard is likely to be included in the upcoming release of 5G standards, issued by 3GPP. All this indicates that India is possibly better placed to be more involved in the 6G standardization process.

Right now, one can say that 6G is on the drawing board – and there is only a little indication of what it might look like.

Several prominent global technology companies, including Nokia and Huawei, say it is likely to become a commercial reality by 2030. Under the circumstances, it is tough to take the Indian administration seriously when it says that India will be able to develop the equipment and software required for 6G within the next three years.

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— Gagandeep Kaur, contributing editor, special to Light Reading