The Minister for Railways, Communications, Electronics & Information Technology for the Government of India, Mr. Ashwini Vaishnaw, took to his Twitter account and heralded the introduction of the 5G network in the country.
He captioned his post saying that he tested out the 5G call at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, Tamil Nadu. He said that the technology has been designed and developed in India. In the tweet, he also attached a video where he calls someone and speaks to him for a while and then switches to video call and tells him that he is connected to the 5G network and that. There are multiple students surrounding him, including the press taking phots and videos of the moment. In the video he posted, he tells the person he is talking to on the phone and to everyone present there that this technology has been developed in India, by Indians, for the rest of the world. He goes on to say that India will be at the top of the world, once they are able to export this technology to the rest of the world.
The tweet has been up for only just over half a day and has already garnered well over 28,000 likes. The post even close to hitting 6,000 retweets. People have reacted to a government official’s social media post quite positively for the first time in a while now.
5G is the fifth generation of instant communication technology which telecom companies around the world started introducing 3 years ago back in 2019. However, it has not scaled up around the world and still does not have the ubiquity that 4G has.
5G however, is a clear and objective upgrade over 4G. The fastest speeds a 4G can reach stands at 1GBPS. 5G is well faster than this as it can reach speeds of up to 20GBPS. Currently, almost a billion Indians have access to 4G network in a daily basis. 4G is even available in every state and union territory and even in smaller towns, villages and far-flung cities. 5G on the other hand, still has not been set up in even the metro cities in India. People of Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, and Bangalore are still using 4G.
It is going to take a lot of investment and effort for 5G to become the norm not just in the metros but all across the nation, but the future of telecom does seem to be quite promising in India.
