The PlayStation 5 Pro went on sale in select markets on Thursday. While customers in regions like the US, UK, EU, and Japan can purchase the PS5 Pro from participating retailers or on Direct.playstation.com, the upgraded console is not currently available in India. Sony confirmed on Friday that the PS5 Pro hasn’t made its way to market here – and won’t be arriving anytime soon – due to telecom spectrum constraints in the country.
Why is PS5 Pro not available in India?
The PS5 Pro supports Wi-Fi 7 (IEEE 802.11be) which uses the 6Ghz spectrum band, which has not been allocated yet in India. Sony has now provided an official update on the availability of the console in India.
“The PS5 Pro will not be available in certain countries (which currently includes India) where the 6GHz wireless band used in IEEE 802.11b (Wi-Fi 7) is not yet permitted,” the company said in an official statement on Friday. Has not been given.”
There is an ongoing dispute between technology companies and telecom operators in the country over the 6Ghz spectrum, with the former demanding its allocation for Wi-Fi and the latter wanting the same for 5G and 6G services. According to a report by Financial Express last month, the Indian government may reserve a portion of the 6Ghz spectrum for telecom companies to expand 5G and 6G services in the country. The 6 GHz band includes frequencies in the range of 5925–7125 MHz.
While this regulatory hurdle is preventing the PS5 from launching in India and is unlikely to be resolved any time soon, many countries have allocated the entire 6Ghz spectrum for Wi-Fi. Meanwhile, the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance has urged the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to allocate the entire 6GHz band for unlicensed Wi-Fi use, according to a report by Capacity Media on Friday.
The PS5 Pro was announced in September and went on sale in select markets on November 7. The console comes with a hardware upgrade over the PS5, packing improved RDNA graphics along with 16.7 teraflops of GPU compute performance. The console also has twice the storage of the PS5 and comes with advanced ray-tracing features and Sony’s new AI upscaling technology. The console is priced at MSRP $699.99 (approximately Rs 58,750).
