Prime Minister Narendra Modi will officially launch the 5G mobile service in the country on Saturday in the presence of Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Jio, Sunil Mittal of Airtel and Kumar Mangalam Birla of Vodafone Idea, while giving the keynote address at the Indian MobileCongress here.
Sources indicated Modi would witness the 5G technology prowess to be presented by the three operators – RelianceJio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea. Apart from the telcos, the telecom gear, network operators and chip makers such as Nokia, Ericsson, Qualcomm and Intel are expected to showcase the possible usage and technological advancement of the fifth generation airwave.
As the 5G service is believed to be about 10 times faster than its predecessor, delivering peak data transfer speeds of up to 20 gigabytes per second or more than 100megabytes per second, it opens up significant business opportunities in different spheres from gaming to real-time surgery to driverless cars.
Delhi’s Indira Gandhi international airport has now become India’s first 5G-ready airport. DIAL, the airport operator, in a statement said: “Passengers will be able to experience 20 times faster speed compared to available Wi-Fi networks.”
Sources said the four metros — Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta and Chennai — would be the first to experience the service. The service would be rolled out across the country by the end of this year.
