With countries like the US and China already planning to test a 6G network, Indian users will have to wait for a couple of years to get the 5G network in the country.

You might have noticed that right from the beginning of 2019, smartphone brands like Samsung and OnePlus have started launching their 5G phones. However, it’s almost the end of the year but in India, we don’t have a single 5G enabled smartphone yet.

According to the Hindustan Times, even after a lot of claims by the government, 5G technology may take another 5-6 years to reach the masses in the country. 

Indian users might have to wait for other 5-6 years to get an authentic 5G experience.

Wondering why this is occurring at the time when 5G is growing force globally? Well, the simple logic would be that the 5G spectrum allocation is still to take place, without which full-fledged cases won’t be feasible.

According to IT Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, the tests for 5G assistance with radiowaves given by the ministry will work in the next 100 days. However, if we look at how devices are currently working, it does not sound very promising.

The entire ecosystem, including original equipment makers, spectrum, infrastructure and edge tools, is currently dropping, because of which, various 5G devices are not available for the Indian consumers.

Neil Shah, Research Director at Counterpoint Research, said,

We require 5G to enter the mainstream in India in 2023 and mass-market starting 2025 or so. This will, nevertheless, be much earlier related to the 3G and 4G era, which received at least seven to eight years in India for the first global commercialisation for any period of tech drops.

While we haven’t seen a single 5G enabled device yet, International Data Corporation (IDC) requires 5G shipments to give 8.9% of smartphones sent in 2020, accounting for 123.5 million devices shipped. This is likely to grow to 28.1% of worldwide smartphone shipments by 2023.