COAI Calls Rumours About 5G Trials and COVID-19 False, Baseless

Telcos have dismissed the rumours circulating that 5G trials are spreading COVID-19. Via COAI, the telcos have called the rumours “absolutely false”. The telcos also called on people to disregard such baseless information.

Silly Rumors about 5G Trials

SP Kochhar, DG, COAI, talked about these rumours in a statement on Friday. “We would like to clarify that these rumours are absolutely false…we urge people not to fall for such baseless misinformation”, he said. He further asked citizens to “to beware of these fake messages,” calling on them to fight “this menace of misinformation”.

COAI represents the Big Three of Indian Telecom - Reliance Jio, Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel.

Incidentally, the DoT gave the nod to 5G Trials earlier this week. As such, the strong response from COAI seeks to clear some of the misgivings on the much delayed trials.

The 5G Trials allow Airtel, Jio and Vi’s applications to work on 5G in India. Notably, no Chinese vendors made it to the shortlist of 13 approved applications.

As per DoT's guidelines, the 5G trials will take 6 months to complete at first. This duration can change depending on the performance. What's more, the telecom department has also allotted spectrum in 700 MHz, 800 MHz, mid-band and mmWave bands for these trials.

What makes these rumours all the more incredible is the fact that no 5G trials have even started in India yet, as COAI pointed out. What's more, there aren't any 5G towers in India as well.

Kochhar pointed out that many countries are already using 5G without any health risks. “We have shared our concerns with DoT and have apprised them of the situation,” he said in the statement.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) clarified that there is "no correlation" between 5G technology and COVID-19. WHO also issued a visual, which is as follows:

As per WHO, viruses cannot travel on radio waves/mobile networks, which should be common sense. Therefore, WHO concurred that there are no adverse health effects with exposure to wireless technologies.