Bharti Airtel wants all the Indian 5G smartphones to support all the existing spectrum bands. The telco has expressed this to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) via a letter as reported by the Financial Express. Airtel wants the telecom department to ensure that any 5G smartphone that’s sold in India must support all the existing spectrum bands. This includes both the smartphones that have already launched and the one’s that will launch in the future.
Why Does Bharti Airtel Want All Spectrum Band Support for 5G Smartphones in India?
First of all, note that the Indian market has already started flooding with new 5G smartphones in 2021. While there were a few 5G smartphones launched in 2020, the numbers have increased significantly in 2021.
But there’s an issue with some smartphones. There are 5G devices that don’t support all the existing spectrum bands. This means that even if the telecom operators, including Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, and Vodafone Idea (Vi), comes out with 5G networks in different spectrum bands in the future, these smartphones might not be able to support it.
This would render the 5G smartphones totally useless for the user. Further, this will impact the revenues of the telcos who have invested a lot in developing 5G solutions and purchasing equipment for upgrading the network since there will be very less little users actually purchasing 5G plans.
Smartphones such as OnePlus Nord CE 5G and the OnePlus 9 series can only support one and two 5G bands. Even though the 5G bands supported by these smartphones will be useful for the user, they won’t allow them to experience the full potential of 5G networks.
Even the old spectrum bands which are currently used for 4G should be supported by these smartphones. This will ensure that if the telcos come out with 5G services using 4G spectrum bands, all the devices will be able to support 5G.
