After a break of two years following the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indian Mobile Congress was back in 2022 packed with a bunch of announcements and new launches, mostly focused on spearheading 5G connectivity in the country.
The event also marks the official rollout of 5G services by three of the country’s most popular telecom providers, Airtel, Jio and Vi (Vodafone Idea) inaugurated by Prime Minister Modi.
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Airtel, Jio and Vi announce 5G networks
- Airtel, Jio and Vi have announced their plans to bring 5G networks to India.
- Airtel’s 5G services will roll out in some areas of Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Siliguri, and Varanasi starting October 1. The rollout is expected to cover the entire country by March 2024.
- Jio’s 5G coverage will start between October 22 to 26 and will initially cover four cities — Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. The coverage will extend to other cities in a phased manner by December 2023.
- Vi or Vodafone India has announced that its 5G rollout will start soon, but hasn’t specified any target cities or has provided a timeline yet.
- As far as pricing is concerned, Airtel claims that 5G tariffs will be available at existing 4G prices, with more plans to be announced soon. Jio and Vi haven’t announced prices at the moment.
STL announces Gram Galaxy
- STL has announced a new initiative called Gram Galaxy to facilitate last-mile rural connectivity and village digitalisation in the country.
- The program will use open-source data with AI and GIS database to enable “first-time-right” designs and a detailed bill of materials to fiberise all of India’s 6,25,000 villages.
- Villages will be connected by weather-resistant aerial cables to connect rugged terrains paired with outdoor distribution retractable cables and accessories which can be buried, aerially deployed or installed along facades and walls in rough terrain offering “significant time and CapEx savings”.
- There’s also a special indoor/outdoor last mile connectivity cable which will be universally compatible with WiFi hotspots, home broadband and 4G/5G microsites.
STL unveils 5G cosmos to better prepare Indian telcos for their 5G rollouts
- Following the 5G rollout from multiple Indian telcos at IMC 22, STL has announced 5G Cosmos, an optical solution for towers and small cells to facilitate quick fiberisation of macro and small cells at a large scale.
- 5G Cosmos includes optical network topology design, Stellar Fibre, intelligently bonded ribbon cables, plug-and-play optical devices ad Automation-focussed fibre deployment.
- The aforementioned technologies will help telecom providers to reduce installation times, optimise project costs and build more competent networks with better scalability, bandwidth and reduced latency.
Keysight extends partnership with IIT Madras for 6G research
- Keysight Technologies has extended its partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) to move past existing 5G design and testing into further 6G research.
- Keysight had previously signed an MoU with IITM to support the Telecom Standards Development Society of India (TSDSI) in the development process for 5G standards tailored to the country’s needs. The project was funded by the Department of Telecommunications.
- This new MoU extends this existing partnership in areas of mutual interest and aims to launch 5G services in the country by 2030.
MediaTek and Invendis collaborate to launch 5G routers and WiFi solutions
- Smartphone chipmaker MediaTek announced a collaboration with Indian company Invendis at IMC 22 to roll out 5G capable routers and WiFi solutions.
- The announcement was accompanied by Invendis’ Silboa line of routers including 4G/5G routers with WiFi 4/5/6 capabilities and support for standards like multi-WAN, VPN, SD-WAN and NMS among other things.
- The product line is powered by MediaTek components including the router and repeater platform MT7682K/N/A, MediaTek MT7621A/N a dual-core network processor for 2×2, 3×3 and 4×4 WiFi platforms and the MediaTek MT7915 WiFi 6 Wave 1+ chipset.
HFCL announces 5G Lab-as-a-service initiative
- HCFL has announced a 5G Lab-as-a-service initiative to provide an automated test environment for private companies, academic institutions and the government to work together on things like prototyping and product testing.
- The Lab hopes to be a sandbox for rapid prototyping for 5G use cases and address the requirements for different industries in terms of manufacturing, transportation, healthcare and retail.
- The Lab will also help create pre-integrated and pre-validated 5G solutions for Low Mobility Large Cells required for the rural broadband rollout in the country.
Airtel demos their 5G-based Cloud Gaming services
- Airtel demonstrated their 5G-based cloud gaming service that allows players to use their existing game libraries to play games over the cloud.
- This removes the requirement for high-end gaming PCs or consoles as the games are run on a server and streamed to the user, who can access them on any 5G capable device.
- Airtel claims a latency of 15-30ms when streaming games and states that there will be different tiers with potentially varying performance for casual and pro gamers.
- There’s no word on when the service will be launched or on pricing. However, users can expect an official announcement sometime next year.
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