Airtel is now 5G ready, waiting for adequate spectrum to rollout services

Airtel is now a 5G-ready network and the telecom operator is waiting for adequate spectrum allocation to rollout 5G services in the country, said Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO, Bharti Airtel on Thursday. Recently, the company demonstrated live 5G over a commercial network in Hyderabad city and said that its network is 5G ready. Airtel did this over its existing liberalised spectrum in the 1800 MHz band through the Non Stand Alone network technology. Using the dynamic spectrum sharing, Airtel operated 5G and 4G concurrently within the same spectrum block.

“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,” said Gopal Vittal.

Airtel said it is capable of delivering 10x speeds, 10x latency and 100x concurrency when compared to existing technologies. In the Hyderabad demonstration, users were able to download a full length movie in a matter of seconds on a 5G phone. This demonstration has underlined the company’s technology capabilities.

The full impact of the 5G experience, however, will be available to our customers, when adequate spectrum is available and government approvals received, Airtel said.