Telecom Giant Bharti Airtel gears up for new 5G trials. Randeep Sekhon, Airtel CTO declared that the upcoming rounds of trials are likely to be on the millimetre wave.

Bharti Airtel is all set to step into the next set of 5G trials. The company is now awaiting more equipment from their vendor partners and expect the trials to be on the millimetre wave. Airtel CTO Randeep Sekhon has explained that the trials are to be held on the millimetre wave band. This band is what is considered to be most suitable for 5G networks, although the price details are yet to be discussed.

The first set of 5G trials was conducted by Airtel in collaboration with Ericsson, its Swedish telecom equipment partner. The trial runs were held in Delhi -NCR outskirts and sources revealed that the trials showed promising results.

A commercially available 5G smartphone (3GPP BASED) was able to be connected to the 5G test network 10kms away with over 100Mbps speeds. A mid-band spectrum (3500MHz band existing FDD spectrum) was allocated for the test purpose.

Speaking about the current scenario, Airtel CTO Randeep Sekhon says -“Within two quarters after the auction, 5G networks can go live. After 1 year, we can see a large portion of the country getting covered by 5G

TRAI is supposed to deliver the price recommendations by November this year and if all goes as planned, the auction of 4G and 5G spectrum will be held by the Indian Government by Jan-March 2022.

If not, the 5G spectrum sale auction will be postponed to a later date. The auction is for getting quotations regarding the price for bands supporting 5G technology which include existing 4G and 5G spectrum bands and various new ones in millimetre wave frequencies like the 26 GHz and 28 GHz bands.

How fast the 5G spectrum can be introduced on a full scale in India will depend on the pricing details also as the mm-Wave band is considered to be one of the most expensive.