5G INTERNET COMES TO INDIA

Airtel, Huawei Ready to India's first 5G providers.

New Delhi: Bharti AirtelBSE -0.88 % and Chinese telecom gear maker Huawei have successfully conducted India’s first 5G network trial under a test setup at the former’s network experience centre in Manesar, Gurgaon. 

Abhay Savargaonkar, director – networks at Bharti Airtel, said the test is a small but significant step in its journey towards next generation 5G mobile networks, which could offer data speed up to 100 times faster than current 4G networks. “The promise of 5G is endless; it will be a game changer, and it will change the way we live, work and engage,” he said. “We look forward to working closely with our partners for developing a robust 5G ecosystem in India.” 

India plans to roll out 5G services for consumers by 2020 and to achieve that objective, the government had in September this year set up a high-level forum that will evaluate and approve roadmaps and action plans to bring in the latest technology. 

Telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan recently said the department was expected to finalise a roadmap for 5G services by June this year. The industry — reeling under debt of more than Rs 7 lakh crore mainly due to cut-throat competition .. 

“We’re moving quickly to begin collaboration towards 5G interwith its ecosystem of partners, He said efforts on the 5G front will open the doors for Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality. 



During the test trial, a user throughput of more than 3 GBPS was achieved using the setup. This is the highest measured throughput for a mobile network in 3.5 GHz band with 100 MHz bandwidth and end-to-end network latency of approximately 1 msec.