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Airtel trial demonstrates 1 Gbps speed: Is this how 5G will look like in India?

Not too long ago, India found itself at the bottom rung of countries in terms of internet speed. Ookla’s Speedtest Global Index placed the country at the 122nd place among 139 countries in mobile internet speed, and at the 68th place out of 180 nations for fixed broadband speed. 5G nears commercial rollout in India
According to the Ookla report, India’s average mobile download speed reaches 17.77 Mbps, significantly lower than the global average of 55.07 Mbps. Among the countries with ~17 Mbps mobile download speed includes Namibia, Algeria, Samoa, Libya, and Uganda.
Things are looking up, however, for India. Recently, telecom operator Bharti Airtel conducted a cloud gaming session over a 5G network, as part of its trials before commercially launching its 5G services in the mobile-first country sometime next year.
The 5G cloud gaming demonstrated in Manesar, Gurgaon, used the 3500 MHz high capacity spectrum band allotted by the Department of Telecom, according to Bharti Airtel. The telecom giant tapped two of the top gamers in the country, Mamba (Salmad Ahmad) and Mortal (Naman Mathur), to test the ultra-low latency 5G environment via a sprint racing challenge on Asphalt using mid-segment smartphones equipped with test 5G SIMs.
[embed tweet] https://twitter.com/airtelnews/status/1433350886382706691?s=20
The result, according to Airtel, showed the trial sessions delivered download speeds above 1 Gbps and latency in the range of 10 milliseconds. In comparison, the Speedtest Global Index showed the current 4G mobile internet speeds in India has an average latency of 47 milliseconds and an average download speed of 17.77 Mbps with upload speed of 5.09 Mbps.
Cloud gaming one of 5G’s biggest use cases

Bharti Airtel CTO Randeep Sekhon expects cloud gaming to be “one of the biggest use cases of 5G,” given the combination of high speed and low latency.
“After delivering India’s first 5G demo over a test network, we are thrilled to conduct this exciting 5G gaming session. Imagine real-time gaming on the go with someone sitting in another part of the world. This is just the beginning of an exciting digital future that Airtel will enable for its customers as we prepare to roll out 5G in India,” Sekhon said.
It isn’t just cloud gaming that will benefit from the commercial rollout of 5G in India—it’s the whole thriving online gaming market, especially since more and more desi consumers are turning to digital environments for work, keep up with the latest news, pass time playing online blackjack games and casual entertainment games, or even spend virtual time with their family.
As an ENV Media report noted, “around half of all smartphone users in India play mobile games” with Android devices as “the primary medium” for online and offline games: “The Covid-19 pandemic was an unexpected event for all. Yet, it turned into a factor that pushed most digital trends in the same direction they had already taken. Reportedly, around half of all smartphone users in India play mobile games at this point. Over the course of a difficult year for humanity, many consumers found solace and entertainment outlets in mobile games, spending more than an hour with them, on average.”

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