Bharti Airtel group is preparing to test its 5G services on the millimeter band, the group said in a media interaction on Tuesday.
The Department of Telecommunication (DoT) and Telecom Regulator Authority of India (TRAI) have been in conversation over the base price, amount, and other modalities for spectrum across multiple bands. While the end verdict will still lie in the hands of the government, TRAI would circle down to the final prices of these bands. Even though no pricing has been revealed, Airtel is keen on testing their services in the millimetre-wave band, which is 24.25-28.5 GHz. “Our next round of trials should be on the millimetre wave,” Bharti Airtel Chief Technology Officer Randeep Singh Sekhon said during the media interaction.
The telecom player had announced on Tuesday, collaborating with Ericsson, that it had conducted the country’s first 5G network trial in a rural location in the country. The initiative was taken to elucidate the potential in 5G to bridge the pertaining digital divide in the country.
“The demonstration took place in Bhaipur Bramanan village on the outskirts of Delhi-NCR, using the 5G trial spectrum allocated to Airtel by the DoT. The trial showcases the potential offered by 5G in bridging the digital divide by enabling access to high-speed broadband through solutions such as enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) and fixed wireless access (FWA) services,” Airtel said.
“5G will be a transformational technology when it comes to delivering broadband coverage to the last mile through use cases like FWA and contribute to a more inclusive digital economy,” Nunzio Mirtillo, Head of Ericsson (Southeast Asia, Oceania and India) said at a virtual event. He also stated that the 5G network would act as a socio-economic multiplier for the country.
“According to a study by Ericsson, on average, a 10 per cent increase in the mobile broadband adoption ratio causes a 0.8 per cent increase in GDP. Over the past few months, Airtel and Ericsson have teamed up to showcase enhanced speeds of more than 1Gbps on a live 5G network set up at Cyber Hub in Gurugram, using Bharti’s 3,500 MHz trial spectrum,” Sekhon added.
Ericsson and Airtel had previously in January this year had demonstrated the Ericsson Spectrum Sharing features on a commercially deployed installed base of 1800 MHz liberalised frequencies in Hyderabad, exposing users to 5G for the first time from a live commercial network.
Descending 4G, the 5G network promises a far more extended and overlapping network with high speed and more responsive internet connectivity at low latencies.