The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) and Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will meet with key smartphone makers like Apple, Samsung, and Google to push for them to roll out software updates to their phones to support 5G in the country.
The officials will ask the smartphone markets to enable their handsets to support 5G, across both the standalone (SA) and non-standalone (NSA) architecture and release software and firmware updates over the air to support the high-speed network.
Telecom operators Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio have launched 5G services across several cities. While over 100 million subscribers in India have 5G-ready phones, many devices, including Apple, are not supporting the service at present.
Under SA, which Reliance Jio has opted for, the 5G network can operate with dedicated equipment, and run parallel to the existing 4G network, whereas in NSA, which is being deployed by Airtel, operators can maximise the utilisation of their existing network infrastructure with relatively lower investment.
Several smartphones made by Apple, Samsung, Google and OnePlus currently do not support Airtel 5G, according to the telco’s website. In case of Apple, the manufacturer is yet to update its software to support Airtel’s 5G for all of the iPhones that support the technology, that is starting from the iPhone 12 series to the latest iPhone 14 series.
The website also showed that while some of Samsung’s entry level smartphones have been updated to support Airtel 5G, several of its mid-tier to flagship phones such as the S20 fan edition and Galaxy Z fold 2 do not currently support the network.
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