5G may come to India sooner than you think

The government is readying to auction 5G spectrum giving a much needed boost to IoT adoption in India.

The Indian government plans to leapfrog when it comes to 5G adoption. The fifth generation of connectivity has been a hot area of innovation this past year, with major tech companies already making entry roads to support India’s 5G infrastructure.

5G is expected to drastically reduce latency, and offer wider, better connectivity. The new standard is said to bring with it speeds of up to 10Gbps, making it 100 times faster than the current 4G network.

Now, as per reports, the government is looking to initiate 5G spectrum auctions starting with bands over 3,000 MHz. This will help India rollout the next generation communication standard faster than expected. Over and above its mobile connectivity capabilities, 5G will be vital for machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, a much needed boost to the adoption of the Internet of Things in India. It will also have an important role to play in developing smart cities and infrastructure in the country, keeping in line with the current administration’s smart city project.

It is expected that the 5G spectrum will be sold in 3,300 MHz and 3,400 MHz bands. A source told ToI, “These bands have potential when considered from the point of view of where we are headed for, in terms of technological progress. We intend to move in early in adoption of new technologies and also get a response from the industry on the matter.“ The proposal is also known to have done its rounds within the Telecom ministry and the TRAI is also expected to be roped in soon to recommend reserve prices for the spectrum sale.

Speaking to Digit on the subject of 5G adoption in India at the sidelines of the India Smart Grid Week, Kavitha Mohammad, Director of Intel’s Solutions Group for Asia Pacific and Japan said, “3G, 2G, they were meant for people to people communication, but 5G, we are actually positioning that for machine-to-machine communication. Because you know you have some limitations. For instance, video cannot be transmitted on certain media, but then with 5G it’s a totally different architecture, it supports a different type of data and bandwidth. Again, I wouldn’t say it’s a natural transition from 4G to 5G, but it will happen in parallel, because they are meant for different segments too. I think 5G adoption will happen sooner than you think. It’s going to happen anytime now.”

5G was also a trendsetter at the Mobile World Congress this year. State run telecom operator, BSNL was reported to have signed an MoU with Nokia in Barcelona for a smoother transition to 5G networks. BSNL Chairman, Anupam Shrivastava told PTI, “After 4G, the future is 5G and IoT, which is useful in the concept such as smart cities... The MoU will help BSNL to draw a framework for transition from the current network to futuristic 5G network.” Nokia has also partnered with Bharti Airtel to create a roadmap for for 5G and IoT applications. The agreement will give Airtel access to use Nokia's 5G FIRST end-to-end 5G solutions, such as AirScale radio access portfolio and AirFrame data center platform.

Chipset maker Qualcomm was also strutting its 5G trials around the Mobile World Congress. The company has joined forces with the likes of Vodafone, Ericsson and Intel, to accelerate standardisation of 5G New Radio (NR). It expanded its Snapdragon x50 5G modem family to include support for 5G NR. These devices are designed to support 2G/3G/4G/5G functionality on a single chip.

Given that India is currently at the helm of telecom innovation, with networks like Reliance Jio offering world-first free of cost services, It is surely an encouraging sign to see the government's eagerness in building infrastructure to further 5G infrastructure, in turn giving a major push to its Digital India agenda

Everything Nokia announced at MWC 2017

Nokia is back, and it’ll return to the market in Q2 this year. The company started off with three new smartphones: the Nokia 5, Nokia 3 and Nokia 3310. Here’s all you need to know.

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Reliance Jio v. Airtel v. Vodafone

With the three leading telecom operators declaring "unlimited" plans, we look at how they stack up against each other.

With Reliance Jio sparking a revolution of sorts in the Indian telecommunications sector, the likes of Airtel and Vodafone have been raising the bar to make data and calling more affordable. In their quest, all three telecom operators now offer "unlimited" calling and data bundles at comparable pricing. Which one should you pick? Read on.

Speed
As per TRAI's MySpeed app report, Reliance Jio is topping the 4G download speed charts in India with 16.3Mbps average speed, followed by Vodafone with 9.2Mbps average speed, while Airtel ranks fourth with 5.8Mbps. For upload speeds, Vodafone leads the chart with 5.2Mbps, with Jio on third with 3.06Mbps and Airtel marginally behind with 3.05Mbps. On overall terms, Jio and Vodafone are in the lead with 4G services in India, with Airtel falling behind in total data on offer and overall data speed.

Validity
While you only get the "unlimited" plans as prepaid with Airtel and Vodafone, Reliance Jio offers the same plan as both prepaid and postpaid offers. Anyone can subscribe to these offers from Reliance and Airtel by March 31, 2017, while Vodafone plans to rope in all its users by March 15, 2017. Each of these three plans will remain active until March 31, 2018, and come into effect on April 1, 2017. Vodafone, however, has confirmed that this plan is being offered to a "select" group of users, and we are not yet sure how the eligibility is being judged.

With all of this in sight, the new war of 4G services is slated to rise this month. While Vodafone seems to be matching Jio's offerings toe-to-toe, it remains to be seen if Airtel introduces further plans in the near future, or remains content with the service it is presently offering.

Google Assistant starts rolling out to Android smartphones running Marshmallow or later

Google Assistant starts rolling out to Android smartphones running Marshmallow or later

Google Assistant was first showcased at Google I/O 2016, and was later launched with the company's Pixel smartphones.

Google Assistant, the search giant's alternative to Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa has started rolling out to Android smartphones running Marshmallow and Nougat versions of the mobile OS. At Mobile World Congress, the company had promised to bring Google Assistant to more devices, and today it is making good on that promise.

Google Assistant is an upgrade over Google Now, and offers a conversational user interface. The AI-powered was first showcased at Google I/O 2016, and was later launched with the company's Pixel smartphones. The Assistant was later made available on the Google Home speaker, Google's Allo messaging app, and more recently on Android Wear 2.0. Google wants Assistant to power as many platforms as it can, including Android TVs and set-top boxes.

Google Assistant served as one of the biggest selling points for Pixel devices and with Assistant on more Android smartphones, Google will have significantly larger pool of data for its machine learning algorithm. Google Assistant can be accessed on any supported device by updating Google Play services. Once installed, users can launch the AI assistant by pressing the Home button.

Airtel's new 4G tariff plan has a big catch, here's what it is

As part of the new Airtel 4G plan, only 500MB per day can be used during the day, and the rest between 3am and 5am.

On March 4, reports surfaced of Airtel’s new tariff plan of Rs. 345, that seemingly offers 1GB of 4G data each day for 28 days, along with unlimited calling services. The tariff plan takes on Reliance Jio’s recently unveiled Prime membership plan that offers 1GB of 4G data each day for 28 days alongside unlimited VoLTE calling services, for Rs. 303 per cycle.

However, Airtel’s data offering has a major restriction in the way it is being offered. Out of the 1GB/day FUP restriction, users can use 500MB during the day, and the rest 500MB is restricted to between 3am and 5am. Many may find this somewhat constricted, seeing that Jio offers 1GB of 4G data usage at any time during the day. On top of this, customers get unlimited data usage time between 2am and 5am, over and above the subscribed pack.

The advent of Reliance Jio has seen much uncomfortable ruffling of feathers from other telecom operators. Airtel had a long-standing tiff surrounding Jio’s continuing free data offer, which seems to have ended with the data-first operator beginning to charge its users. Vodafone and Idea have seen talks of mergers taking place, although nothing has materialised out of that as of today.

It remains to be seen how these new plans are taken up by users, who are certainly enjoying the drastic tariff cuts being given out to them.

GOOGLE WILL LAUNCH NEW PIXEL PHONES THIS YEAR.

HOPE THIS WILL BE NOT SO EXPENSIVE.

There is no doubt that Pixel is one of the best phone hardware Google has made and seeing the sales numbers, company’s efforts seem successful. Now Google’s Rick Osterloh has cleared that the search giant will be launching a new Pixel Phone this year and it will be aimed at premium segments.

Speaking to Android Pit’s Eric Hermann at MWC 2017, Osterloh said that a successor to Pixel phone would come this year just as Apple and Samsung do for their flagship devices, however, he did not reveal any release date estimations. “There is an annual rhythm in the industry. So, you can count on us to follow it. You can (also) count on a successor this year, even if you don’t hear a date from me now,” he said in the interview.

Most smartphone companies launch new flagship phones yearly, and the pattern has been very constant in recent years. Google launched first Pixel phones in October last year, and the new phone may launch in October too.

There were talks that Google may launch a cheaper Pixel Phone, but Rick refuted any claims about making cheaper Pixel varients.

Before being appointed by Google, Rick was an ex-Motorola employee, and he is currently managing all the hardware work for Pixel Phones.

Considering how hard is buying a Pixel Phone because of stock problems, let’s just hope that Pixel 1 will be in stocks after Pixel’s successor comes out.

Rumor says Pixel 2 will drop the Headphone Jack

 Pixel 2 will drop the Headphone Jack

It’s certainly been an interesting 12 months or so for the 3.5mm headphone jack. Apple’s iPhone 7 debuted without one and with the Moto Z following suit in the realm of Android, many enthusiasts were afraid that manufacturers like Samsung and LG would follow lock-step behind Apple in this decision.

Both the upcoming LG G6 and the Samsung Galaxy S8 will feature a headphone jack, but if a recent rumor is to be believed it may be Google that falls in behind Apple first. 9to5Google is reporting that the next-generation Pixel flagship phone won’t feature a headphone jack, according to internal documents seen by the site. It’s worth noting that they weren’t able to verify this rumor with multiple sources, however.

According to Stephen Hall, the language in the document presents the removal of the headphone jack as matter-of-fact, as if this is something Google’s been considering for a while. If this development turns out to be true it’s rather ironic, considering the inclusion of the 3.5mm headphone jack was one of the marketing bullet points in the first Pixel ad.

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