The onboarding process and speed tests for Airtel are better than Jio. However, no one is truly 5G.
After the Honourable Prime Minister formally launched commercial services of 5G network, in over a month’s time I am now able to get 5G in my vicinity (Gurgaon, which is part of Delhi NCR) from both the operators offering 5G services as of now.
Now that I have both the services to compare, here is my quick review of the two. Well, the biggest disappointment as a consumer is nothing changes for me dramatically. I am getting almost same speed as 4G. At instances, in fact less than that. The other issue is it’s not a reliable service yet. At times it chokes somewhat. There are hardly any push notifications that work, even for WhatsApp! To make a digital payment in the market it doesn’t get through. I force switch to 4G to make a digital payment.
5G story so far has been a big disappointment. Leave aside zero latency networks, we are nowhere close to the speeds promised by the entire 5G enabler ecosystem. With this network quality who can develop use cases for 5G? It is very important for any use case to work in real world conditions and with 5G being so uneven that in some pockets it will show 500 Mbps speed against 22 Mbps in others, there is nothing that any use case developer can deliver or promise to deliver. We don’t want the developer community to go back to ‘lite’ alternatives where for instance they downgrade the graphics quality. 5G was never sold for that.
Among the operator race, Airtel definitely seems to be a winner on three parameters. It was the first one to launch 5G, which honestly makes hardly any difference. No one is craving for 5G that there can be any early mover advantage gained. The best point to my mind for Airtel was its utility to check if 5G is available in an area along with checking if the device is compatible. Compared to this, Jio’s approach was a bit archaic where it would take the details and notify via an SMS once the service was available and the device compatible. In an era of instant gratification, Airtel used a better approach.
Comparing the services, at my place the speeds of Airtel turn to be better, 3 times that of Jio. But again, this is nothing to celebrate. Both the speeds are nowhere close to 5G speeds. Also, the experience is so uneven across the places that in one place Airtel will have better speed while Jio will show great speeds at another location. The experience is not homogenous.
With the present service of 5G being delivered, there is no convincing reason for a consumer to switch to 5G even if it is offered free. Rather for pre-paid consumers, it will only fast burn the data packs almost in a blink. The entire telecom fraternity – operators, vendors and other enablers shall have to collaborate stronger to make the 5G experience match what has been said and marketed about the next generation of cellular technology so far. Else, consumers will really have a very bad impression of the service forcing them to remain on 4G, which is good for no one. Switching off 2G is challenging in Indian conditions, but operators can definitely work fast to make 5G the default network and plan a shutdown of 4G networks in 3-5 years from now. However, it all depends on how 5G is delivered. The ball is definitely in the operators’ court.
