On Wednesday, Apple Inc. announced that it will allow 5G services in India in iPhones in December through a software update. These services were just just made available in the country.
The electronics giant said in a statement, “We are working with our carrier partners in India to offer the best iPhone experience to users as soon as network validation and testing for quality and performance is finished.”
The services, which will Apple made available for iPhones 12, 13, 14, and SE, “will be activated via software update and will start rolling out in December,” the announcement continued.
The announcement by Apple Inc. of Cupertino, California, came on the same day that top officials from the Union government were set to meet with executives from domestic telecom operators (Bharti Airtel, Reliance, and Vodafone Idea) and foreign manufacturers (Apple, Samsung, Vivo, and Xiaomi) to discuss early 5G adoption.
Why this meeting was held on short notice?
On October 1, Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled the country’s adoption of next-generation technologies, prompting Bharti Airtel to roll out its network across eight cities and Reliance to begin beta testing its services in four. Both companies have pledged to increase their network capacity in 2019.
However, several of Samsung’s top-tier handsets, including the Galaxy S9 and S9+, and a number of iPhone models do not yet have software capable of supporting 5G. This caused senior officials in the telecom and IT ministries to call for a meeting out of concern.