Manufacturers of smartphones would stop producing 4G devices costing more than Rs 10,000

Representatives of the mobile phone sector pledged to gradually stop producing 4G phones that cost more than Rs 10,000 and convert to 5G technology during a meeting with senior government officials on Wednesday.

In a meeting with cell operators and smartphone makers, senior officials from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) gave them a three-month deadline to transition to 5G services and 5G devices.

Cessation of 4G Phone Production

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Representatives of the mobile phone sector pledged to gradually stop producing 4G phones that cost more than Rs 10,000 and convert to 5G technology during a meeting with senior government officials on Wednesday. In order to discuss ways to make it simple for people to access 5G services, top executives from telecom carriers and smartphone manufacturers including Apple and Samsung attended the meeting.

According to a representative from a major smartphone business, there are about 750 million mobile phone subscribers in India. While 100 million customers in India have 5G-capable phones, more than 350 million consumers only utilise 3G or 4G phones. The smartphone manufacturer informed the government that it would gradually discontinue making 3G-4G compatible phones that cost more than Rs 10,000.

In India, more than 100 million people own 5G-capable smartphones, yet several manufacturers, including Apple, do not offer the service on their models. Once testing is begun, smartphone manufacturers will identify the problem that 5G phone customers are encountering. Bharti Airtel is deploying 5G in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Siliguri, Nagpur, and Varanasi in comparison to Jio. The meeting’s agenda included a discussion about getting client devices ready for 5G services being launched by telecom providers on 5G networks.

The topic of smartphone and telecom firms’ involvement in the rollout of software FOTA updates for all 5G devices was also discussed. For India’s early rollout of 5G, it was also decided to give the software upgrade top priority.