The country’s largest telecom operator, Bharti Airtel (Airtel), and Chinese telecom vendor, Huawei, on Friday said they have successfully conducted India’s first 5G network trial under a test set-up. The trial was conducted at Airtel’s modern Network Experience Centre in Manesar (Haryana). The set-up included 5G radio access network (RAN) operating on 3.5 GHz band, 5G Core and 50GE Network Slicing router, Huawei said in a statement.
“During the test trial, a user throughput of more than 3Gbps was achieved using the set-up. This is the highest measured throughput for a mobile network in 3.5 GHz band, with 100MHz bandwidth and end-to-end network latency of approximately 1 msec,” it said. The set-up demonstrates high spectral efficiency and potential for diversified services such as Internet of Things and AR/VR (augmented/ virtual reality), which can be delivered by 5G technology to serve a digitally connected world, the companies said.
“This is a small but significant step in our journey towards 5G. The promise of 5G is endless, it will be a game-changer and, it will change the way we live, work and engage. We’re moving quickly to begin collaboration towards 5G interoperability and development testing based on the 3GPP R15 standards. We look forward to working closely with our partners to develop a robust 5G ecosystem in India,” Abhay Savargaonkar, Director – Networks, Airtel, said.
The 5G R15 focusses on enhanced mobile broadband, laying the key building blocks to support services such as virtual reality, ultra-high definition immersive video and a diversified long tail of future use cases and innovations. 3GPP completed the first drop of 5G New Radio standards in December 2017.
“We have been focusing on developing a 5G ecosystem and use cases, and the show with Bharti Airtel impressively demonstrates the performance capability of 5G in 3.5 GHz band. We will also continue to work with vertical industry players to develop wider ecosystem use cases beyond enhanced mobile broadband," Emmanuel Coelho Alves, Director, Wireless Marketing, Huawei, said.