Almost a week after the launch of 5G services – in eight cities by Bharti Airtel and beta testing by Reliance Jio in the four metros – all is not well as far as the quality and user experience of the services are concerned, leading the government to intervene in the matter.
In a first of its kind exercise, the secretaries of department of telecommunications and ministry of electronics and IT, have jointly called a meeting of all handset makers like Apple, Samsung, Oppo, Vivo and others as well as telecom operators Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, and Vodafone Idea on Wednesday.
The agenda of the meeting is threefold: one, ask the telcos about the readiness of their networks so that handsets can be tuned to them; two, find out from the handset makers regarding the status of software upgrades which are required in the 5G-enabled phones; and lastly, prioritise software upgrades so that early adoption of 5G can happen in the country.
Sources said that the government has intervened in the matter as after the launch of 5G with great fanfare as early subscribers are facing patchy services, slow download speeds and worse of all unavailability of services on their devices even if the phone happens to be 5G-enabled.
Sources said that Apple has not upgraded the software in its devices like iPhone 12, 13 and 14 as a result of which users having these premium handsets are not able to access 5G services even in areas where the services have been rolled out. Android devices have a better score on this front but are still far from perfect. For instance, only around 4-5 Samsung handsets have had software upgrades till date.
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However, industry sources said that the fault is not only of the handset manufacturers but also of the operators. Not enough 5G radios have been deployed on towers as a result of which the coverage is patchy.
For instance, in the case of one of the operators, only 1% of the towers have 5G radio installed till date, whereas for a reasonably good service, at least 10% of towers should be deployed with the radios. With lesser radios deployed, the range of 5G coverage also tends to be very short – around 250-300 metres in a dense area. So, for instance, Connaught Place or Pragati Maidan where Airtel’s 5G services are live currently, the coverage range is very short.
Operators say that with only 50 million 5G handsets in the country at present, it makes little sense for them to switch on all the towers as it will consume high energy. “It’s like opening a super highway on which only a handful of vehicles pass,” said an executive.
The viewpoint of premium handset manufacturers is that if the operators provide patchy services, their brands would suffer as the quality of service would be poor, hence they are slow in upgrading the software. “The coverage of towers and upgrade in software should go hand in hand. As the telcos upgrade, we will also upgrade,” said an executive from the handset industry.
As the telcos and handset manufacturers blame each other, early subscribers are not happy with what they are getting. Several shared screenshots of their download speeds with FE, which are as low as 3.8 MBPS. The best speed which some users are getting is 55 MBPS when the minimum one should get for 5G is 100 MBPS.
Analysts said that one of the problem being faced by users could be that while their phones may show a 5G sign, the coverage may not be there. This typically, happens in non-standalone 5G networks, which Airtel has. Since the back-end is the same in such networks (4G as well as 5G), the sign of 5G may get displayed even if the user has moved out of the 5G coverage range.
This problem will not be faced by Jio subscribers as the company has a standalone network, which means that the 4G and 5G networks are different.
