India, the world's second-largest telecoms market, has finally launched commercial 5G with Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio introducing services.

Bharti Airtel became the first service provider to launch 5G in India, in the capital city of New Delhi by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the recently-concluded India Mobile Congress (IMC), the largest telecom event in India.

Figure 1: India's top two service providers finally launched 5G services in a few cities with the promise to extend coverage over the next few months.
(Source: Steve Jurvetson on Flickr CC2.0)

Airtel's 5G will be available in eight cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Varanasi, Hyderabad, Siliguri, Chennai, Nagpur and Bengaluru. The service provider plans to expand the network across the country by March 2024. As of now, the 5G services will be available at 4G rates and the new 5G tariff will be announced soon.

Second place

Close on the heels of Airtel's 5G launch, Reliance Jio also announced the availability of the beta trial of its True 5G services. It will be available from tomorrow in four cities – Delhi, Mumbai, Varanasi and Kolkata.

Users will get unlimited 5G data with up to 1Gbit/s speed, and will be automatically upgraded until network coverage in the city is complete. It is currently available by invite only.

Jio indicated that its services are likely to remain affordable for all segments of the society, which may prevent Airtel and Vodafone Idea from charging a premium.

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"5G cannot remain an exclusive service available to the privileged few or those in our largest cities. It must be available to every citizen, every home, and every business across India," said Akash Ambani, chairman of Reliance Jio.

"Only then can we dramatically increase productivity, earnings, and living standards across our entire economy, thereby creating a prosperous and inclusive society in our country."

India conducted the 5G auction in August. Airtel awarded contracts for 5G to Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung soon after. The service provider had acquired 19,867.8MHz spectrum in 900MHz, 1800MHz, 2100MHz, 3300MHz and 26GHz frequency bands. Jio is working with Ericsson and Nokia as well, along with Cisco and Qualcomm.

It is not clear when Vodafone Idea, India's third-largest service provider, will launch 5G. It has yet to announce vendors for the network. Media reports indicate that the company's financial health is preventing it from clearing past dues and signing new deals.

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— Gagandeep Kaur, contributing editor, special to Light Reading