At the ongoing India Mobile Congress, Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies demonstrated the first ever live 5G video call in India using 28 GHz spectrum. The call was made using a smartphone based on the Snapdragon 855 processor with Snapdragon X50 5G Modem-RF System and Ericsson’s 5G platform including 5G NR radio, RAN Compute products and 5G Evolved Packet Core.
Both companies demonstrated India’s first 4K video streaming, video calling and 5G cloud-based gaming using the 5G commercial system in both sub-6 GHz and mmWave using 5G commercial devices, set up by Ericsson at its booth.
Nunzio Mirtillo, Head of Ericsson South East Asia, Oceania and India, made a video call at the Ericsson booth to Rajen Vagadia, Vice President, Qualcomm India on site at IMC 2019.
‘Ericsson was the first telecom vendor to demonstrate 5G technology in India in 2017. Over the past few years we have been working with several stakeholders to build the 5G ecosystem in the country. Today marks an important step in India’s journey towards 5G.
While talking about India, the executive said that ‘India is the most dynamic, and complex market from mobile broadband perspective.’ While it may take some more time to see when citizens see 5G, according to Mirtillo, 4G tech will be squeezed to the maximum in the country. ‘We are already producing 4G in India for India, and we are ready to produce 5G in India for India. This 5G video call and our longstanding collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies is a testament of how the real benefits of 5G can be achieved through partnerships and collaborations,’ Mirtillo said.
Mirtillo told reporters that Ericsson has launched commercial networks across four continents, that is, in Europe, Asia, America and Australia in the last four quarters. He said Ericsson enabled 19 live 5G networks in these continents, noted that ‘the company has never compromised in investing in technology and innovation.’
For those who don’t know, the Swedish telecom giant is already making 4G radio products at its Chakan factory in Pune. The products made here are for both exports and use in the domestic market. The company says it would soon start manufacturing 5G radio products in India for exports as well as domestic consumption.
Meanwhile, Vagadia said that in India, mm wave is important because the country is vast and to provide a good quality network to the citizens, a huge spectrum (of mm wave) is required. On the video call, Vagadia said, ‘The 5G video call made at India Mobile Congress today, showcases one of the many use cases of 5G's massive broadband capabilities including mobile and fixed wireless applications. Through our industry wide collaborations on software, silicon and networking capabilities, we want to highlight the myriad use cases of 5G which offer immense potential and reach through the mobile cloud, which will also bring some very unique benefits to India, enhancing and enriching the consumer experiences by bringing multi-gigabit connectivity into their hands and homes.’
