Bharti Airtel (Airtel) on Thursday said it successfully conducted India’s first cloud gaming session in a 5G environment at Manesar (Haryana), as part of the ongoing 5G trials using spectrum allotted by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).

Cloud gaming allows users to stream and play games in real time without having to invest in gaming hardware. With the advent of 5G networks, cloud gaming is expected to become the new normal as users will be able to enjoy a high-end console-like gaming experience on smartphones and tablets while on the move, the company said.

Large potential market

With growing smartphone penetration in India and 5G networks, mobile gaming has a $2.4 billion market opportunity. India’s base of 436 million online gamers is expected to reach 510 million by 2022, as per studies.

“Cloud gaming will be one of the biggest use cases of 5G thanks to the combination of high speed and low latency. Imagine enjoying real time gaming on the go with someone sitting in another part of the world. This is just the beginning of an exciting digital future that Airtel will enable for its customers as we prepare to roll-out 5G in India,” said Randeep Sekhon, Chief Technology Officer, Airtel.

Also see: Airtel may gain market share, accelerate industry consolidation

Earlier this year, Airtel successfully demonstrated 5G services over a Live 4G network in Hyderabad, marking an industry first. It is also conducting 5G trials in multiple cities across India and validating technologies and use cases through the trial spectrum allotted by the DoT. Airtel has partnered with Ericsson and Nokia for these trials.

Airtel is also spearheading the O-RAN Alliance initiatives in India to build 5G solutions. It has already announced partnerships with Tata Group, Qualcomm, Intel, Mavenir and Altiostar.

Successful test run

For the 5G cloud gaming demonstration, Airtel partnered with two of India’s leading gamers – Mortal (Naman Mathur) and Mamba (Salman Ahmad). Leveraging the gaming technology platform from Blacknut, a sprint racing challenge on Asphalt was unveiled for Mortal and Mamba to put their gaming skills to test in a blazing fast and ultra-low latency 5G environment.

Both were connected to 3500 MHz high-capacity spectrum band. The 5G test network delivered speeds in excess of 1 Gbps and latency in the range of 10 milliseconds, Airtel added.