Airtel Successfully Tested 5G In India & We Can’t Be More Excited

In January, Airtel became the first Indian telco to successfully demonstrate Live 5G over a network in Hyderabad

For 25 years now, Airtel has been empowering Indians with its customer-centric technologies and innovations. The telco has played a key role in bringing about a digital and telecom revolution in the country. Now, as Airtel gears up to launch 5G in India, things are only going to get a lot more exciting because the future of the Internet and everything else is going to change forever.

Bringing 5G to India

In January, Airtel became the first Indian telco to successfully demonstrate Live 5G over a commercial network in Hyderabad, proving that its 5G service is going to be a massive breakthrough. It will completely change the way devices connect to the Internet, and most importantly to each other.

Step Into the World of 5G

With its super-fast speeds and extremely low latency, 5G will significantly improve everything we do. For the uninitiated, once 5G is here, all bandwidth-intensive tasks such as video calls, online shopping, and mobile gaming will get faster, seamless, and lag-free.

Let’s take a look at different use-cases that show you how 5G will enhance our lives:

#1 Stream & Download Movies Within Seconds

Saying that 5G will be fast is an understatement. You will be able to stream multiple movies in 8K resolution at the same time without noticing any buffering.

In their recent tests, Airtel demonstrated 5G through dynamic spectrum sharing where both 4G and 5G operated on the same 1800 MHz band. While this was only a fraction of the speed we can expect when 5G is launched for consumers, Airtel was still able to deliver a whopping speed of 310 Mbps. This means you can stream a 4K or 8K movie from anywhere and it will start without any buffering.

#2 Reshaping Travel Through Augmented Reality

With 5G, you can visit places from the comfort of your home through virtual tourism. The two most important things needed for seamless AR-VR are high internet speeds and low latency, and 5G happens to offer both. The system should be able to register even a slight head movement and render the graphics instantaneously, and fast data transfer without any delay will play a major role here. Airtel's 5G will run on an ultra-low latency rate, which means there would practically be no delay between sending a message and receiving the information.

Even when travelling for real, your phone powered by 5G can be your personal guide. For example, language can also be a major barrier in non-English speaking countries. While real-time translation is available, that too has its fair share of limitations. Here as well, 5G can prove to be a game-changer. The combined power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and 5G can make translation almost instant, accurate, and devoid of any lags. This way, not knowing a foreign language will no longer be a hindrance.

#3 Redefine Your Shopping Experience

Let’s say you want to buy a bookshelf for your home. You obviously want to make sure it fits in the available space and blends in well with your home décor. 5G will work in tandem with AR and AI to make this process effortless. Here’s how.

You will have to switch on the camera on your 5G phone. AI will then measure the dimensions of the space where you want to place the shelf. Thanks to 5G’s lightning-fast speeds, large data files can easily be moved around, and AR will provide you with a 3D representation of how the bookshelf will look in your room. All this will happen in a flash. This means you will not just be able to see different shelf designs in real-time but also get a near-accurate idea of whether they fit your requirement. Now, isn’t that amazing?

Several supermarket businesses have also made the entire shopping experience virtual. Just like shopping in a mall, you will get to view products, try them (in case of clothing), get them scanned to the billing counters, and proceed to checkout – all while sitting at home.

#4 Next-Level Gaming

If you are a gaming enthusiast, 5G will give you more than enough reason to rejoice. 5G's near-zero lag will not only improve regular online gaming experience but will also open avenues for completely new kind of gaming. Imagine AR and VR gaming as common as playing games on our smartphones. You'll be able to convert your living room into a gaming arena with VR headsets and high speed 5G connection. Gaming from the movie Ready Player One could be real soon.

5G will give a major boost to cloud gaming too. As opposed to console gaming where games are stored on a console, cloud gaming hosts games and all related processes in the cloud. This way as long as your phone can support 5G speeds, you would be able to play even console games on your device because the processing will happen elsewhere and you'll just stream it on your phone.

#5 Smarter and Safer Cars

Thousands of accidents happen every day and one of the biggest breakthroughs of 5G can be more secure self-driving cars. These cars can communicate with each other, traffic lights, road sensors, aerial drones, and so on. Imagine if your car could react to and communicate with thousands of other cars on the road. Not only this will end car accidents, but it could solve the problem of traffic jams too. With the high speed and low latency of 5G, these smart cars can process large amounts of data and make quick decisions within milliseconds, way faster than a human driver.

The use-cases mentioned here are just the tip of the iceberg. They provide you only a tiny glimpse into the world of 5G that is otherwise teeming with infinite possibilities. 5G will make unimaginable ideas a reality and that's why we're totally thrilled about Airtel’s progress with 5G in India.