Indian Government to push smartphone firms for faster 5G software updates

Top officials of the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) and Ministry of Electronics and IT (IT Ministry) have called for a joint meeting of smartphone companies and telecom operators on Wednesday due to concerns related to 5G services in India. This is because currently the latest iPhone 14 and many of Samsung's premier phones do not support 5G network in India.

The meeting will be held at the DoT office and it will be chaired by secretaries of both DoT and IT Ministry. The agenda of the meeting includes a discussion around enabling smartphones to begin supporting 5G services in India. In this meeting, the authorities will discuss the intervention of smartphone manufacturers and the telecom operators to update all the 5G handsets and release the software update for the adoption of 5G in the country.

Bharti Airtel is the only telecom company to have commercially launched 5G services in India and Jio has also started beta trials.

According to reports Apple is currently testing iPhone with Airtel and Jio to work on updating the software to support 5G services. Samsung flagship smartphones and some of the mid-range 5G handsets already have support for 5G network. They are also working on releasing updates for the rest of the smartphones.

Reuters reported that Apple Inc, Samsung Electronics, Vivo, Xiaomi Corp, as well as the three domestic telecom operators, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Even the government's IT and telecom departments did not respond.

Published on: Tuesday, October 11, 2022, 06:46 PM IST