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The launch of commercial 5G in India is believed to increase the mobile network download speed by as much as 10 times when compared to the download speeds of present 4G- LTE (long term evolution) networks, confirmed global internet testing Ookla in a report.
“It is impossible to say exactly how fast 5G will be for the average Indian user, given uncertainty over exact spectrum allocations and rollout plans (including the radio access network and improvements to backhaul and transport networks), but it’s safe to say 5G will bring a considerable bump to overall speeds in the country,” the company further revealed in details in the report.
Ookla’s assessment and finding of mobile network download speed increasing by up to as much as ten times is based on testing internet speed of networks of countries in Asia where 5G services have been recently rolled out.
To give you a perspective, in Thailand and Philippines, commercial 5G services were launched in the first and second quarter of 2020, respectively, with internet download speeds on 5G networks reaching upto 231.45 Mbps and 151.08 Mbps, respectively. On the other hand, speed offered by 4G was mere 25.99 Mbps and 15.12 Mbps, respectively.
In India, the download speeds of Reliance Jio Infocomm, which took the lead in initiating 5G testing, has already shown improvements over the last 6 months, according to Ookla.
“The operator’s median download speeds have increased from 5.96 Mbps in March 2021 to 13.08 Mbps in June. Its upload speeds and Consistency Score (percentage of samples which exceed 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload) also saw considerable improvements,” Ookla said in its report.
On par with the global players, India, in 2018, had planned to start 5G services as soon as possible, with the view to capitalise on the better network speeds and strength the technology that 5G promised to offer.
All the three private telecom players, be it Reliance Jio Infocomm, Bharti Airtel and Vi, have been urging the DoT to lay out a clear road map of spectrum allocation and 5G frequency bands, so that they could plan their roll out of the services accordingly. One big hurdle, though, is the lack of flow of cash and adequate capital with at least two of these players, i.e. Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea.
Although India lags behind global markets in 5G roll-out, the delay infact is good as it will “eventually benefit the operators as they can procure the network equipment at a lower cost”.
“The adoption of Open RAN system by the Indian operators will further aid in bringing down the overall cost of 5G rollout. The 5G smartphone prices have already fallen and this trend will continue, spurred in India by partnerships such as Jio Platform’s with Google,” Ookla said.
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