Bharti Airtel on Thursday said its network is 5G ready now as the telco successfully demonstrated live fifth generation service - with ultra high speeds - over a commercial network in Hyderabad city.

The move assumes significance as telcos are gearing up to leverage 5G as the next frontier for future growth to bolster revenues and  provide stronger customer experience.

 While the latest demonstration underscores the company’s technology capabilities for rolling out of fifth generation services in future,

Airtel said the actual impact of 5G experience will be available to customers, “when adequate spectrum is available and government approvals are received”.  For the demo run, the company leveraged existing liberalised spectrum in the 1800 MHz band.

“In many ways now, it is a flick of a button to turn on 5G. It is important that we get the right 5G experience for which adequate spectrum in the right bands need to be made available. 

 “Today, we have conclusively demonstrated that as far as Airtel is concerned, we are 5G ready,” Bharti Airtel MD and CEO Gopal Vittal said at a virtual conference.

The company said Airtel 5G is capable of delivering 10x speeds, 10x latency and 100x concurrency when compared to existing technologies. Specifically, in Hyderabad, users were able to download a full length movie in a matter of seconds on a 5G phone.

Using dynamic spectrum sharing, Airtel seamlessly operated 5G and 4G concurrently within the same spectrum block.  The company said its demonstration has validated the 5G readiness of Airtel’s network across all domains -- radio, core and transport.