Introduction
The best way to predict the future is to create it. And in India, one name has been doing it for more than a quarter of a century. Now Airtel where pioneering is not just a word on a page but a feeling in our guts, a feeling that pulses through us every single day as we push the digital transformation movement in this country. Airtel was the first to launch GPRS and pioneered the 3G wave before breaking through with the 4G revolution that changed the way every man, woman, and child connected to the future. And today Airtel stands on the cusp of a new frontier 5G for over a year. Some of India's finest minds have been innovating on technology solutions that will not only raise the bar on connectivity but also cross it when the time is right.
In the city of Hyderabad Airtel become India's first telecom company to demonstrate a live 5G service over a commercial network at speeds that can allow anyone to download an entire movie in seconds. This is a moment that marks India's first step as a global power in 5G innovation and Airtel stands committed to lead the nation to that goal. Airtel may provide free data when 5G will available to everyone. Airtel may provide free data when 5G will available to everyone.
5G vs 4G
Okay! It's time to get serious about 5G. Apple seemed quite excited about it during the launch of the iPhone 5. Now, Airtel is bringing 5G but seriously when would India get 5G, 5G phones are already here. Well, 5G is also here kind of. Mashable India got the opportunity to experience 5G speeds in India and test them too. There are also some rumors that Airtel may provide free data when 5G will available to everyone. But before I get to what that was like, let's look at what 5G really is. First and foremost, let's understand latency.
Latency is basically the amount of time it takes for you to send data and receive a response from a server. This is measured in milliseconds. Ideally, you want as low latency as you can get. Latency has always been present in our connections. For example, when you are streaming a live event like a cricket match with a 4G connection, the video you are seeing is slightly delayed from what's actually happening on the ground. 5G is designed to significantly reduce latency overall. This generation of wireless is expected to provide a 10x decrease in end-to-end latency than we have data rate. This is basically the transmission speed of data and it is calculated in bits per second. Well with 4G, you could get peak data rates of up to 135 Mbps but with 5G, you can expect that to reach peak data rates in Gigabytes per second or Gbps.
Network capacity is the amount of traffic that a network can handle at any given time. With 2G and 3G phones, anyone could barely browse the web. Than 4G gave us improved speeds but there was a slight problem. Billions of people were all trying to share the same radio channels on which our phones run. 4G could support about 4000 devices per square kilometer. Whereas 5G which uses a different radio frequency can support over a million. I told you Mashable India did sort of test 5G in India. Mashable India visited airtel's head office and got the opportunity to first-hand experience their upcoming 5G network. The first thing that Mashable India did was to check the data speed on a 5G radius smartphone. Needless to say, Mashable India was quite blown at the speeds they received. They thought why not use this in the real-life scenario where they are either streaming or downloading 4k videos.
Disclaimer!!!
This demonstration underlines the company's technology capabilities. The full impact of the 5G experience however will be available to their customers when the adequate spectrum is available and government approvals are received. So don't shy away from buying a 5G phone. Smartphone manufacturers have started rolling out 5G ready smartphones in India at affordable prices. Therefore to get the new generation network, you don't have to rob a bank. To sum it all, 5G is about to change the world in ways we can't even imagine yet and airtel is going to be among the first to provide that.