Samsung 5G trials early next year

Korean smartphone technology major Samsung on Friday said it will conduct 5G field trial in New Delhi in the first quarter of next year.

The company has been working with the Department of Telecom. The 5G field trial is planned in New Delhi in the first quarter of next year, Samsung India Senior Vice President and Head (Network Business) Srinivasan Sundararajan told reporters here.

In India, Samsung is the telecom gear provider for Reliance Jio's pan-India 4G network.

Asked if Jio's network could be upgraded to 5G, he said the network was built for 5G as it is a complete IP-network which makes it "much easier to adapt" to new technology that comes in with just "software upgrades".

On its engagement with other operators for 5G deployment in India, Sundararajan said it is still early to talk about who their partners will be, but Reliance Jio will "always remain the prime partner".

Samsung is already working with telecom operators in the US and Korea for 5G deployment commercially and that the new-age technology holds huge potential for India from network and associated devices perspective, he said.

The Department of Telecom had already invited the telecom vendors like Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei and Cisco to conduct 5G field trials in the country. The government is expected to provide 100MHz of radio wave for the trials.