India is on the verge of getting 5G and will soon have 6G in future. Let us examine the evolution of network.
1G: Voice Calls
You must have seen bulky phones with unreliable network reception. There were elongated antennas and poor battery times. This is how the mobile communication commenced. The communication was enabled between two supported devices. It was an analogue system. It supported only voice calls. The quality of the calls was not satisfactory. These served a fixed area, as there was no roaming service.
2G: Telephony Services
Some of the drawbacks of the first generation were fixed, and new features were added. The digital system replaced the analogue system for wireless transmission. It was called the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM). The quality of calls improved. There were data services of SMS and MMS. The mobile network supported roaming facility. Sending and receiving calls became easier. Telephony services matured. Later, there was support of GPRS — General Packet Radio Service and EDGE — Enhanced Data GSM Evolution. Before moving to 3G, there was 2.5G.
3G: Age of Apps
It heralded high-speed internet services pawing way for the smart phones and application eco-system. There was mobile TV, radio and email. Video calling became possible. Phone apps defined this era. iPhones and Android phones appeared in the market. In those days, the internet speed was stated in kilo-bytes-per-second (Kbps). However, the shift was not direct from 2G to 3G. There was 3.5G in-between, which gave internet speeds in mega-byte-per-second (Mbps). There was introduction of HSDPA — High Speed Downlink Packet Access and HSUPA — High speed uplink packet Access.
4G: Internet calling
We are now in 4G era. The data speed increased. There were advanced multi-media services. It perfected LTE — Long-term Evolution system. It improves data rate, and makes possible simultaneous transmission of data and voice. VOLTE or voice-over-LTE made possible internet calling. VoWiFi or voice-over-WiFi is possible for enabling voice calls in areas with low or no internet reception.
5G: IoT and Enterprises
Significant changes are seen in network while moving from 1G to 4G. 5G is different. It is a network both for the smart phone and enterprises. There are improvements in data speeds. At the same time, there is low latency and high throughput. This makes it ideal for enterprises. It is conductive for automation and connected eco-system. It will enable technologies such as metaverse.
6G: Connected Eco-system
6G will be used at the enterprise level. It will extend the use cases of 5G, e.g. metaverse. India may start 6G services by 2025.