(Image source from: www.timesnownews.com)
While few countries in the world, as well as South Korea, will begin the commercial roll-out of 5G this year itself, India is gearing up to start the procedure in 2020, a top Samsung executive said at India Mobile Congress 2018 in New Delhi on Friday.
In collaboration with the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Samsung is planning to begin the first large-scale 5G trials in India in the first quarter of 2019.
"We will start India 5G trials in New Delhi," Srini Sundararajan, Senior Vice President and Head of Networks Business at Samsung India, told a group of journalists.
The assumption of 5G in India will rely on the sort of use cases that the people of the country need. The spectrum which is allocated will as well impact what kind of use cases will be appropriate for 5G adoption.
"Once the country decides on the use cases, we will have all other equipment including the devices necessary for those specific use cases ready," Sundararajan said.
The roll-out of 5G is expected to speed up India's GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth and transform galore sectors including education, healthcare, agriculture, and disaster management.
"5G is a complete ecosystem. Its adoption will not completely replace 4G," Sundararajan said, adding that a nationwide commercial roll-out of 5G is not immediately necessary to leverage the benefits of low latency and high throughput that this technology provides.
While adoption of this technology may at first be limited to a few sectors of the economy, it will also bit by bit transform consumer experiences.
"The television talking to the refrigerator and the refrigerator talking to the microwave will be a reality in a few years from now," Sundararajan said.
At IMC 2018, Samsung showcased how its 5G solutions can enable a variety of 5G-powered business models and scenarios, including 5G home broadband services, smart farming, and smart cities.
With its victorious evolution of the initial commercial ASIC-based 5G modems and mmWave RFICs, the company has been making compact-sized 5G radio and router devices and CPEs (Customers Premises Equipment).
Samsung has been selected by the world's leading operators such as Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and SK Telecom for both 4G and 5G services and solutions.
In India, the company is a crucial supplier of network infrastructure for Reliance Jio which has successfully built a large mobile network in the country within a short time period.
The Jio-Samsung 4G LTE network handles more than 90 petabytes of data traffic every day, equal to 600 billion images shared on social media in a day.
"Jio was built for 5G. It is a complete IP network and will mostly require software upgrades to update the network," Sundararajan said.
Samsung's solutions span network equipment, devices, and chipsets.
In his keynote address on the inaugural day of IMC 2018 on Thursday, Youngky Kim, President and Head of Networks Business at Samsung Electronics, emphasized that Samsung will pave the way for 5G to unlock the full potential of India together with industry leaders.
-Sowmya Sangam
