5G roll-out in india

In News 

• Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that 5G deployment in India will commence sooner than expected. 
• The implications of the 5G roll-out could be significant, particularly for law enforcement in India.

About 5G Technology

• It is the latest upgrade in the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) mobile broadband networks with reduced latency than 4G.
• It offers an extremely low latency rate, the delay between the sending and receiving information.
• It mainly works in 3 bands, namely low, mid and high frequency spectrum.

Benefits 

• Connectivity: It  will allow ultra-fast Internet speeds and seamless connectivity across the country compared to 4G. 
• Ensuring security: The 5G roll-out is set to enhance efficiency, productivity, and security by helping the police access critical information in real-time and nab criminals. It will allow rapid communication within the organisation as well as between civilians and emergency responders.
• Better Performance: It  has high bandwidth and low latency, so its adoption would ensure the best performance of police devices such as body cams, facial recognition technology, automatic number-plate recognition, drones, and CCTVs.
• Digital transformation: 5G can lead to widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) enabling the digital transformation of industries, enterprises and the socio-economic development of India. 
• Energy efficiency : 5G places a lot of importance on energy efficiency. This will mean lower energy bills for service providers and longer battery life for mobile devices.

Challenges 

• Most police systems are outdated and may not be compatible with 5G.
• Cyber security concerns : 5G is a software-defined digital routing which makes it susceptible to cyber threats such as botnet attacks, man-in-the-middle attacks, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) overloads. The bandwidth expansion due to 5G can enable criminals to embezzle data bases easily. 
• The expenses for setting tower stations are high when compared to other networks. 

Suggestions

• The government and telecom companies could think of setting up a 5G crime monitoring task force to monitor and identify new crimes and develop countermeasures. 
• It is imperative to create regulations that make it a crime for people to use 5G technology to commit crimes and law enforcement agencies will have to evolve strategies to identify victims of 5G-facilitated crimes, locate them and take action against the perpetrators of such crimes.
• The police will need to be trained so that they recognise new 5G-enabled crimes and Training programmes focusing on such crimes must be developed.
• In this context, the recent recommendation of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to the government to develop a national road map for India to implement 5G in the best possible manner should encompass law enforcement requirements.
• It also needs to be ensured that  required infrastructure must be developed .