Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies have completed the first ever live 5G video call in India using 28 GHz spectrum. The call was made at the ongoing India Mobile Congress 2019. The 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, set up at the IMC venue at Aerocity. The achievement is a significant milestone in the country as India gets ready for 5G.
MillimeterWave (mmWave) 5G networks are commercial in North America and being rolled out in many advanced countries including Japan and Korea, where 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.
As part of the demonstration, Nunzio Mirtillo Head of Ericsson South East Asia, Oceania and India, made a video call at the Ericsson booth to Rajen Vagadia , Vice President , Qualcomm India Private Limited on site at IMC 2019. The companies have already worked closely to create several 5G technology milestones.
Mirtillo said, “Ericsson was the first telecom vendor to demonstrate 5G technology in India in 2017. Over the past few years we have been working with several stakeholders to build the 5G ecosystem in the country. Today marks an important step in India’s journey towards 5G. 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. Here at IMC 2019, we are also showcasing a host of 5G technologies from our portfolio that will play a key role in helping Indian telecom operators seamlessly evolve towards 5G.”
“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,” said Mirtillo.
Rajen Vagadia of Qualcomm India Private Limited states , “The 5G video call made at India Mobile Congress today, showcases one of the many use cases of 5G’s massive broadband capabilities including mobile and fixed wireless applications. Qualcomm Technologies has been a leader in the mobile industry in conducting foundational research and systems engineering over the past two decades resulting in rapid strides for video transport capabilities across 3G, 4G and now 5G. We are proud to be working with industry leaders like Ericsson, in collaborative global standards development and also in ensuring early and robust interoperability in labs, field testing followed by commercial rollout, across the globe. Through our industry wide collaborations on software, silicon and networking capabilities, we want to highlight the myriad use cases of 5G which offer immense potential and reach through the mobile cloud, which will also bring some very unique benefits to India, enhancing and enriching the consumer experiences by bringing multi-gigabit connectivity into their hands and homes.”
Both companies demonstrated India’s first 4K video streaming, video calling and 5G cloud-based gaming using the 5G commercial system in both sub-6 GHz and mmWave using 5G commercial devices, set up by Ericsson at its booth.
As the preferred partner among pioneering customers, Ericsson was first with commercial live 5G networks in four continents and currently has 27 publicly announced 5G deals with named operator customers.