New Delhi: Mobile networks have come a long way since their first-generation services.
Compare those days when networks could handle only voice calls to the services today as you watch streaming videos on your mobile phones.
From the fourth-generation mobile services, we are well on the path to fifth-generation networks or what is called 5G. Although it is not clear when 5G will finally be rolled out in India, the network deployment for 5G is rapidly underway, according to a report in India Today.
As India is getting closer to implementing it, globally things have gotten from trials to early commercialisation.
Opening the salvo, Bharti Airtel announced earlier this week of beginning its 5G operations in India before this month is out. Reliance Jio will reportedly announce a 5G network on August 15.
You will have to wait for 5G unless you are living in places including Delhi, Gurugram, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chandigarh, Jamnagar, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Pune, and Gandhinagar, where the first phase of 5G will be available soon.
Last week, India's biggest spectrum auction ended after seven days of bidding reporting bids upwards of Rs Rs 1.5 lakh crore.
Reliance Jio purchased the largest amount of 5G spectrum, with its stakes in the total spectrum auction going to more than 50 per cent.
You might well be asking why 5G, because 4G is pretty good at handling data speeds, considering the speed at which the previous generation of mobile services managed it.
However, we don't want the loading circle to spin even for a second leaving us waiting for videos and images to download.
Our connective needs are changing just as mobile data traffic does, making speedier connectivity a necessity.
Hence 5G comes with a promise of delivering data speed at a rate 100 times faster than 4G networks.
5G will offer higher data speeds at low latency, and higher throughput, according to India Today.
Latency means the delay before a transfer of data begins and throughput is a measure of how many units of information a system can process in a given amount of time.
The fifth-generation cellular network will take care of the legacy issues of speed, latency and utility, which both the previous and the current networks fail to address, thus improving the network connections.
Latency or the delay before a transfer of data begins will come down to less than 1 millisecond (ms) from the present 50ms.
Notably, the throughput will be up to 10 gigabytes per second speed, leading to an exceptional increase in the number of connections.