Airtel Shies Away from 5G to Focus on Improving 4G Connectivity for Now

Airtel might be among the earliesttelecom players in India to have been testing next-gen 5G technologybut it islikely to stay away from its commercial deployment.

In a recent meeting with analysts, Airtel’s management reportedly suggested that the company is likely tofocus on rehabilitating its business, which has beenhurt severely since Jio’s entry. Analysts from consulting firm Morgan Stanley, who attended the event, were quoted saying by theEconomic Timesthat the telco will aim at “winning the 4G game decisively despite Jio’s entry“.

The analysts also said that Airtel is not pushing for a foothold in the soon to-be-budding 5G technology whichstill hasthree to four yearsto be established in India. Currently,there is a dearth of actual use-casesof the technology as well asdevices which utilize 5G.

While currently, there is no confirmation on the auction of 5G spectrum in India, recent reports suggest that the sale of the spectrum isnot likely to take place any time before the second half of 2019. However, Airtel is unlikely to participate in these auctions, as per the report.

Jio is in arelatively better positionto transition to a 5G network compared to Airtel and other telcos which have toget rid of legacy network protocols like 2G and 3G, before shifting the load to 4G and 5G networks.

While Airtel might not be very interested in the use-cases of 5G for consumers, the operator is, as peranother report, planning toinvest heavily in IoT systems for enterprise solutions. Since a high-speed 5G network is crucial for seamless and low-latency IoT operations, the operator has been evaluating the promising and exciting aspects of 5G.

Meanwhile, Airtel is constantly working towards revamping its 2G and 3G networks into 4G by reallocating the 900MHz and 2100MHz bands – currently deployed by Airtel for 2G and 3G, respectively –  to the utilization of 4G services.

Beebom Contributor

Add new comment

Name

Email ID

Δ

01

02

03

04

05