Bharti Airtel Turns on Mid-band 5G Trial Network in Gurgaon’s Cyber Hub

Sources report that Bharti Airtel has turned on its 5G trial network in Gurgaon’s Cyber Hub in the Millennium city.

Bharti Airtel's 5G Trial Network

As per DoT guidelines, the site is operating in the 3.5 GHz band, and is delivering a throughput of over 1 Gbps. Sources also said that soon, the telco will launch another such network in Mumbai. Airtel had also become the first country to test 5G over a live network in the 1.8 GHz band.

A few weeks ago, the DoT allocated 5G trial spectrum in the 700 MHz, 3.5 GHz and 26 GHz bands to Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea. DoT asked the telcos to develop India-relevant use cases.

The second largest telco received 5G trial spectrum in 3.5 GHz, 28 GHz and 700 MHz in Delhi/NCR, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru. This allotment was particularly important for Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel. Both the telcos already have 5G-ready networks. Also, both of the telcos have claimed their end-to-end readiness to roll out 5G services in the country. The telco said that as soon as they have "adequate" spectrum, they will roll out the network commercially.

Over the last few weeks, both the telcos have been busy beefing up their networks in many states across the country. Of course, the exercises served to lessen the burden on the network due to increased data usage.

Airtel and Vodafone Idea is conducting 5G trials with Nokia and Ericsson. BSNL is doing the same with Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT). Also, Jio had named Samsung, Nokia and Ericsson besides applying to trial its own technology.