On its 75th Independence Day India is gearing up to launch 5G network in the country. Ookla, one of the leaders in internet testing today released its insights on the impact of the recent allocation of spectrum and roll out of 5G technology on the overall network performance of India.
5G in India = Bump in Network Performance
According to Ookla insights, the launch of 5G network in India has the potential to increase the median download speeds up to 10 times compared to 4G LTE. The findings are based on Speedtest data from other markets in Asia that have recently launched 5G (for Instance, Thailand and Philippines) that shows the differential between 4G-LTE and 5G speeds was on average approximately 9-10 times in Q2 2021.
Ookla suggests that as of June 2021, 64.5 percent of 4G users in India could expect to achieve download speeds in excess of 5 Mbps. It is the speed required to stream HD video content. This has seen an increase from 52.9 percent users in March. Ookla says that it is currently not possible to say exactly how fast 5G will be for the average Indian user.
This is because of the uncertainty over exact spectrum allocations and rollout plans. “But it’s safe to say 5G will bring a considerable bump to overall speeds in the country”, says the company.
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Ookla further mentioned an increase in Jio’s performance. It said that the median download speeds for Jio users have increased from 5.96 Mbps in March 2021 to 13.08 Mbps in June. Its upload speeds and Consistency Score have also seen considerable improvements.
5G rollout delay to benefit operators
The insights by Ookla further stated that the delay in the 5G rollout would eventually benefit the operators. It is due to the fact that they can procure the network equipment at a lower cost. The adoption of Open RAN system by the Indian operators will further aid in bringing down the overall cost of 5G rollout.
The 5G smartphone prices have already fallen and this trend will continue, spurred in India by partnerships such as Jio Platform’s with Google. “Ookla is already witnessing a growing number of Speedtest results running on 5G capable devices in India, which indicates that there will be a pre-installed user base that operators can target from day one of launch”.