Airtel Is Now 5G Ready: Successfully Trials 5G Network In Hyderabad

While India has seen a bunch of 5G enabled devices from a variety of smartphone makers, we still don¡¯t have any clear idea when 5G networks will commence in India.

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However, it looks like we¡¯re not too far from it, as Airtel has announced that it has successfully demonstrated and orchestrated live 5G service in the city of Hyderabad.

Airtel managed to do this atop the existing spectrum in 1800MHz band with the help of NSA or Non-Stand Alone network technology. Airtel has revealed that it has used the state of the art dynamic spectrum sharing to operate 4G and 5G networks concurrently in the same spectrum block.

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Airtel 5G debuts in India

As per Airtel¡¯s claims, its 5G network is capable of delivering 10 times the speed and latency while 100 times concurrency compared to existing technology that it currently uses. It has also revealed that downloading a full-length movie on the 5G network took only a matter of seconds. The company is still awaiting allocation of adequate spectrum and government approvals for commencing its 5G services across the country.

Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO, Bharti Airtel said in a statement, ¡°I am very proud of our engineers who have worked tirelessly to showcase this incredible capability in Tech City, Hyderabad today. Every one of our investments is future-proofed as this game-changing test in Hyderabad proves. With Airtel being the first operator to demonstrate this capability, we have shown again that we have always been the first in India to pioneer new technologies in our quest for empowering Indians everywhere.¡±

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Vittal added, ¡°We believe India has the potential to become a global hub for 5G innovation. To make that happen we need the ecosystem to come together ¨C applications, devices and network innovation. We are more than ready to do our bit.¡±

While Airtel might seem like it¡¯s ahead in the 5G race in India, it isn¡¯t alone as Reliance Jio is also gearing to develop a complete made-in-India solution for its 5G network which is plans on unveiling sometime this year.