Airtel looks to take cloud gaming in India to the next level with latest 5G trial | Digit

Airtel has successfully conducted a cloud gaming session as part of its ongoing 5G trials in India. Bharti Airtel is one of the leading telecom operators in India and it is currently testing out 5G connectivity on a test network allotted by the Department of Telecom (DoT). Airtel is pushing cloud gaming as one of the primary use cases of 5G connectivity. The cloud gaming session was conducted in Manesar Gurgaon where Airtel partnered with Blacknut cloud gaming service and two popular Indian online streamers Mortal (Naman Mathur) and Mamba (Salman Ahmed).

For the uninitiated, cloud gaming is an extension of online gaming that allows users to run the entirety of a game online without requiring them to download it first. This requires high-speed low-latency internet connectivity which is something that a 5G network brings to the table. 

Randeep Sekhon, CTO of Bharti Airtel said, “Cloud gaming will be one of the biggest use cases of 5G thanks to the combination of high speed and low latency. After delivering India’s first 5G demo over a test network, we are thrilled to conduct this exciting 5G gaming session. Imagine enjoying real-time gaming on the go with someone sitting in another part of the world. This is just the beginning of an exciting digital future that Airtel will enable for its customers as we prepare to roll out 5G in India.

Airtel has revealed that for its latest 5G trials, it connected a smartphone to a 3500MHz spectrum band which delivered speeds over 1Gbps and a latency in the range of 10milliseconds. A sprint racing challenge in Asphalt was given to Mortal and Mamba to test out the cloud gaming performance of the 5G test network.

“We were totally blown away. This was a high-end PC and console-quality gaming experience on a smartphone. We can say with confidence that 5G will truly unlock the online gaming scene in India and massify by creating opportunities to build and publish games out of India and bringing a lot of talented gamers from small towns to the mainstream,” said Mortal and Mamba, describing their cloud gaming experience.

According to a report by Statista, India’s base of 436 million online gamers is expected to reach 510 million by 2022. The mobile gaming market in India is set to develop into a $2.4 billion opportunity.

Airtel also demonstrated 5G services over a 4G network earlier this year and is currently conducting trials across different Indian cities and has partnered with Ericsson and Nokia for these trials.