Govt to hold meeting with smartphone firms Apple, Samsung & telecom operators for smooth rollout of 5G

way2barak, Oct.11: Top officials of the Department of Telecom (DoT) and IT ministry have called a joint meeting of smartphone companies, including Apple and Samsung, and telecom operators to ensure smooth rollout of 5G, including smooth onboarding of customers. The  joint meeting of smartphone companies and telecom operators will be held on Wednesday at the Department of Telecom (DoT) office. While over 100 million subscribers in India have 5G-ready phones, many devices, including Apple, are not supporting the service at present.

The agenda of the meeting includes a discussion around enabling the handsets to start supporting 5G services on 5G networks in India. The authorities will discuss the intervention of handset manufacturers and telecom operators to release software updates for all 5G handsets and prioritise the software upgrade for the adoption of 5G in India.

Bharti Airtel is the only company to have commercially launched 5G services while Jio has started beta trials.

The government will push Apple, Samsung and other mobile phone manufacturers to prioritise launching software upgrades to support 5G in the country. This comes amid concerns that many smartphone models aren’t ready for the recently launched high-speed internet service. PM Narendra Modi launched 5G services on October 1.