It is no secret as how bad the cellular connectivity in India at present. While rural parts of the country suffering from patchy connectivity, the cities are increasingly experiencing call drops with each passing day. In total contrast, leading economies around the world are now looking forward to the next generation technology – 5G.
It is not that 5G is all set to be rolled out, nor the technology is fully ready yet. However Qualcomm is doing its bit. The company had recently organized several conferences and demos at the recently concluded Mobile World Congress event in Shanghai, China to showcase what they have achieved so far.
When we asked Qualcomm as how it feels about its 5G technololgy, Durga Malladi, senior vice president, engineering at Qualcomm, in an exclusive interview told The Mobile Indian, “In 5G, we feel that we have a very compelling set of solutions. We are positioned very well. That’s what we believe. We are doing all the right things in terms of building the prototypes for testing. We have received a lot of good feedback from both our partners and vendors, and operators. We feel very confident.”
Qualcomm is currently testing its 5G technology and is hopeful for some sort of commercial deployment by 2020. 5G is expected to bring faster and reliable than what we are getting in 4G currently. But most importantly it is expected to revolutionize and materialize Internet of Things (IoT).
I was amazed, wowed and taken to a whole new world in the Mobile World Congress, Shanghai, where there were several players showing something or other related with 5G or IoT.
But now I am back in India and back to reality of call drops and patchy data connection.
(Disclaimer: The writer was in MWC, Shanghai as a guest of Qualcomm who paid for the travel and stay of the author.)