Though India's first spectrum auction for 5G airwaves was conducted in July this year, the telecom service providers - Jio and Airtel did make a hurry to launch 5G, unlike 3G or 4G. 5th generation of telecom services went mainstream in India on October 1st, 2022. That's just 2 months to get 5G live. Well that's fast, and thanks to DoT, all operators got trial spectrum to conduct 5G trials and tests on their 2G/3G/4G networks. Debt ridden telco Vi is yet to announce its 5G debut.
Though 2G and 4G was first launched in Kolkata in India, this time New Delhi got the honor as the PM, Narendra Modi officially premiered the 5G network of Jio and Airtel during the inauguration of the 6th India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2022 on 1st October. However Jio put Kolkata on 5G map on its first roll out plan, while Airtel put Siliguri of West Bengal in its first roll out - which is bit whimsical.
Just like 4G launch in the country, Jio brings back the unlimited data with its initial 5G offerings - and I personally think that's good strategy to engage the nascent 5G network phase by phase. And this time Jio did not offer 5G on their own devices (remember Lyf 4G handsets?) - you can get 5G whatever smartphone you have, but that must support 5G NR.
Though in Kolkata 5G got live in first 2 weeks of October, it took some time to reach suburban areas of Kolkata. On October 20 I got the required OTA update for my smartphone (Mi 11x Pro). That update was of 145 MB (MIUI 13.0.40.SKKINXM) - includes Android security patch update and Network optimization - support for 5G connectivity.
I first found Jio's 5G SA network in Barrackpore on November 25, 2022 after Jio activates 'Jio Welcome Offer' on my Jio number.
Unless you get the Welcome Offer, you can't latch into Jio 5G-NR network.
Update: From January '23 everyone can enjoy unlimited data on Jio 5G - with a recharge of Rs 61. It also includes 6GB of 4G data (+unlimited 5G data). In May '23 the 4G data has been increased to 10GB.
What I saw, Jio is offering Standalone 5G network - 5G-SA over its 4G network. That means Jio's 5G network is actually independent of its 4G network, but in my experience while calling the network shift to 4G and to 5G happening - may be just initial wrinkles.
My smartphone supports only 3500MHz 5G-NR and so Jio 5G is being offered on in my area (Band 77/78). I don't know whether Jio also launched 5G on 700MHz band in my area or not.
Now coming to main thing - price and how fast is JIO 5G?
First - as of now Jio's 5G is free and unlimited as it is 5G trial till your pack validity, as shown on myJio app. Whatever plan you have, data use over 5G is not being counted.
But if you go to a remote place where no Jio 5G, data consumed to be counted from your 4G data pack. Yes you can trick the phone to be only NR only from deep settings, but that will create problem while making calls.
How fast is Jio's TRUE 5G?
Jio, as launched 5G-SA, is putting the effort to promote their 5G as TRUE 5G. Well, I agree to that.
Jio 5G is superfast - I got max 1300.2 Mbps download speed.
But at 6pm, standing at Barrackpore Rly station the speed was halved - around 500 Mbps. Well still very fast. Youtube or other video services like vimeo was checked - almost zero buffering experienced by me.
From Mobile WiFi Hotspot, I experienced the speed goes down on my laptop. It's around 50 Mbps then.
One thing you must notice, that upload speed is quite low compared to download speed on Jio 5G.
Nearly after 2 weeks on Jio 5G, I would conclude this post saying that Jio 5G is really fast. I always get 300Mbps+ download speed on the go on my mobile. Let's see how fast it remains in coming days!
Updating in May 2023, I found a better platform to check internet speed: https://speed.cloudflare.com/
I am also noting that Airtel is yet to launch 5G in my area till May 25th, 2023.
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