Mobile World Congress: Huawei launches world's first commercial 5G-modem
What's the story
Chinese tech giant Huawei has unveiled the first ever commercial 5G modem in the world at the ongoing Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018 in Barcelona.
The company claims that the modem can deliver a peak speed of over 2. 3 Gigabits per second (Gbps) on a next-generation network.
Here is more on Huawei's efforts to get on board with 5G.
Quote
The product is called Huawei Balong 5G01
"Huawei Balong 5G01 is the world's first 3GPP 5G commercial chipset with a peak rate of 2.3 Gigabit per second (Gbps)," Huawei's CEO of Consumer Business Group Richard Yu said at the unveiling event at the MWC.
In Perspective
India's average speed for wireless and fixed broadband services
To put Huawei's offering in perspective, leading telecom service provider Reliance Jio in India currently delivers wireless broadband with a peak average download speed of around 21 Mbps.
Further, another service provider Spectra claims to deliver fixed broadband network at a peak speed of up to 1 Gbps in the country.
Closer Home
India is ready for 5G
The announcement comes in the light of India having successfully conducted its first 5G network trial.
Done under the partnership of Huawei and Airtel, the trial highlights the country's readiness for 5G and its upcoming plans for a spectrum auction to support the same.
The trial recorded a throughput of 3 Gbps in 3.5 GHz band.
Information
Huawei to partner with 30 operators to deploy 5G services
Huawei also said that it is collaborating with 30 telecom service operators, including Vodafone, in order to deploy its latest offering in global markets. The 5G consumer premise equipment (CPE) or router will deliver broadband services over both 4G and 5G networks.