Ericsson, Qualcomm demonstrate first live 5G video call in India

Swedish telecom gear maker Ericsson on Tuesday demonstrated the first live 5G video call in the country on mmWave.

5G services - which promise faster Internet speed and lower latency for users - is yet to be rolled out in India, even though it has been made available in countries like the US and South Korea.

The Indian government has said it will auction spectrum including 5G airwaves in the current fiscal.

Ericsson's demonstration was done using a smartphone-based on the Snapdragon 855 Mobile Platform with Snapdragon X50 5G Modem-RF System and Ericsson's 5G platform including 5G NR radio, RAN Compute products and 5G Evolved Packet Core.

"This is the first-ever live 5G video call in India using 28 GHz spectrum...This 5G video call and our longstanding collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies is a testament of how the real benefits of 5G can be achieved through partnerships and collaborations," Ericsson Head South East Asia, Oceania and India Nunzio Mirtillo told reporters at the India Mobile Congress 2019.

He added that millimeterWave (mmWave) (28 GHz and 39 GHz spectrum bands) are being considered for 5G deployments.

For mobile networks, mmWave spectrum will be an important capacity layer for both 4G and 5G, he said.

"5G will form the backbone of emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and machine to machine communications and will provide India with smart infrastructure' that will open up new opportunities for the country," Mirtillo noted.

Rajen Vagadia, VP and President at Qualcomm India and SAARC, said smartphones supporting 5G technology should start making their way into the Indian market early next year.