India's telecom operator Bharti Airtel said that it has successfully demonstrated cloud gaming in the country over a 5G network.
The demonstration was conducted in Manesar, Gurgaon, as part of the ongoing 5G trials, using the 3500 MHz high capacity spectrum band allotted by the Department of Telecom (DoT), the second-largest mobile operator in India said.
For the 5G cloud gaming demo, Airtel partnered with Mortal (Naman Mathur) and Mamba (Salman Ahmad), India’s leading gamers. Leveraging the gaming technology platform from Blacknut, a sprint racing challenge on Asphalt was unveiled for Mortal and Mamba to put their gaming skills to test in a blazing fast and ultra-low latency 5G environment.
During the tests, Airtel 5G network was able to deliver low latency of 10ms and a download speed of over 1 Gbps
Randeep Sekhon, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Bharti Airtel, said mobile gaming is a new phenomenon and gaining popularity. Cloud gaming will be one of the biggest use cases of 5G, given the combination of high speed and low latency, he added.
India, with its vast youth population, growing smartphone penetration and 5G networks, will see mobile gaming evolve into a USD 2.4 billion market opportunity. As per some estimates, India's base of 436 million online gamers is expected to reach 510 million by 2022, Airtel said.
Airtel is also conducting 5G trials in multiple cities across India and validating technologies and use cases through the trial spectrum allotted by the Department of Telecom. Airtel has partnered with Ericsson and Nokia for these trials. It is also spearheading the O-RAN Alliance initiatives in India to build 5G solutions.
