Airtel 5G achieves 200Mbps speed in rural India

Randeep Singh Sekhon, Airtel CTO, said, "5G will be a transformational technology when it comes to delivering broadband coverage to the last mile through use cases like FWA and contribute to a more inclusive digital economy. Airtel will continue to be at the forefront of 5G technology and bring more India relevant use cases through partnerships such as the one with Ericsson."

Bharti Airtel conducted its recent trial to demonstrate the network capabilities in rural regions. The trial took place in the Bhaipur Bramanan village located on the outskirts of the Delhi NCR region. The trial was conducted on the 5G spectrum allocated to Bharti Airtel by the Department of Telecommunication. The telecom operator used Ericsson's 3GPP-compliant 5G radio to carry out the 5G network trial in the area. Over 200 Mbps throughput was clocked on the 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) radio located at 10 Km from the site during the demonstration.

"The highlight of the trial was the demonstration of over 200 Mbps throughput on 3GPP-compliant 5G FWA device at a distance of over 10 Km from the site. This translated into an inter-site (between two 5G sites) coverage of approximately 20 km, thus offering the ability to provide high-speed broadband coverage even in the remotest of geographies. As part of the trial, even a commercially available 3GPP-based 5G smartphone was able to connect to the 5G test network and record 100+ Mbps speeds at a distance of over 10 Km from the site," Airtel said in a press release.

Earlier this year, DoT allocated 5G bands to several network operators in India. Jio has been said to record a peak speed of 1Gbps, and Airtel also achieved over 1Gbps peak 5G speeds. Meanwhile, Vodafone Idea reported a peak speed of 3.7Gbps during trials. Further, Airtel has also conducted successful cloud gaming trials in the city of Manesar on the mid-band 5G spectrum.