Smartphone Companies Said to Have Assured DoT to Gradually Discontinue 4G Handsets Above Rs. 10,000

Representatives of mobile phone manufacturing companies on Wednesday met top government officials and assured that they would gradually discontinue the production of 4G phones priced Rs. 10,000 and above and will shift to 5G technology.

Top officials of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) held a meeting with the mobile operators and smartphone makers and directed them to tune in their 5G services with 5G smartphone within three months timeframe. Top officials of both the ministry on Wednesday morning met with the representative of mobile operators and smartphone makers of the country.

An official of a smartphone company told ANI on the condition not to be quoted that smartphone makers will gradually shift to 5G phone priced on or above Rs. 10, 000 category.

He told ANI that India has around 750 million mobile phone users. 100 million subscribers in India have 5G-ready phones, but more than 350 million consumers use phone which are only 3G-4G compatible. "We told the ministry that our company will gradually discontinue 3G-4G compatible phone which are priced above Rs, 10,000," said the official.

The meeting which lasted more than one hour was attended by top officials of smartphone manufacturing companies, including Apple and Samsung, and telecom operators on issues related to providing smooth access to 5G services.

Another official of a smartphone company told ANI that the meeting was called for the fine-tuning between mobile operators and smartphone makers. Smartphone makers agreed to start testing of their devices with the mobile operators providing 5G services.

He said that over 100 million subscribers in India have 5G-ready phones, but many devices which are not compatible with 5G services including Apple, are not supporting the service at present. "Once we will start the testing, we will figure out the problem that the consumers having 5G phone are facing," the official said.

Bharti Airtel has started rolling out 5G in eight cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Siliguri, Nagpur and Varanasi while Jio has started beta trials in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Varanasi.

The agenda of the meeting included a discussion around enabling the handsets of the customers to be ready for 5G services launched on 5G networks by telecom service providers. The intervention of the handsets manufacturers and telecom service providers to release software FOTA upgrades for all 5G Handsets was also discussed in the meeting. It was also decided to prioritise the software upgrade for the early adoption of 5G in India.