MediaTek to Back mmWave Spectrum, 6G Advancements in India

• MediaTek to support mmWave spectrum for India’s 6G future.
• MediaTek’s Dimensity 1050 is its first mmWave chipset.
• Trai recommends 37–40 GHz bands for future mmWave use.

MediaTek, a Taiwanese wireless chipset manufacturer, said that it would support millimeter wave, or mmWave, frequency bands in India, which could help the nation's aspirations for next generation (6G).

"MediaTek invests very heavily in cellular. That's our biggest segment. We believe in millimeter wave bands. From a cellular perspective, you need millimeter wave bands because we're all going to run out of frequencies and also 6G is also going to have even higher frequencies," Thomas Ho, marketing director, MediaTek said.

India's Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel have millimeter wave airwaves in the 26 GHz band, according to a fabless semiconductor business led by Rick Tsai. Both of these established telecom providers are currently in the planning stage.

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Reliance Jio, owned by Mukesh Ambani, and Bharti Airtel, led by Sunil Mittal, purchased 26 GHz band airwaves in the 2022 spectrum sale. However, in order to comply with minimum rollout standards, both service providers have to implement 5G services based on mmWave range.

Jio applied for permission to use mmWave spectrum for Wi-Fi technology from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) last month. With Jio and Airtel's expansion of Air Fiber, the multinational claimed to have up to 60% of the indoor Wi-Fi 6 router market, improving user experience.

The Dimensity 1050 system-on-chip (SoC), MediaTek's first mmWave 5G chipset, was introduced in 2022 and will power the upcoming 5G smartphone generation.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had suggested the 37-37.5 GHz and 37.5-40 GHz spectrum bands for sale earlier this year in an effort to free up more mmWave frequencies. Above 24 gigahertz (GHz), the mmWave bands are seen as a useful resource serving crowded cities. Service providers have the chance to provide high capacity and low latency via high-band airwaves.