No 5G For iPhone Users In India? Access To 5G Will ‘Open Soon’ For iPhone Users, As Per Airtel CEO

The leading Indian private sector telecom major Bharti Airtel has become the first telecom company in the country to roll out its 5G services. This happened on October 1, 2022, when the company’s Founder and Chairman Sunil Mittal announced the launch of 5G services across 8 cities in India, including Tier-2 cities.

We will shed some more light on this event further in the article.

With the launch of 5G in India by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the opening day of the India Mobile Congress, an event dedicated to the telecom industry exclusively on Oct 1, 2022, all handsets/smartphones having the 5G support feature have the Airtel 5G services working on them.

Phones from all the manufacturers except Apple. Apple’s iPhones are not supporting the 5G services feature by Bharti Airtel.

Here’s what the telecom giant has to say about it.

Airtel CTO on 5G Compatibility with Apple’s iPhones

On the sidelines of the India Mobile Congress event, Bharti Airtel’s Chief Technology Officer Randeep Sekhon confirmed that iPhone users will soon be able to utilize the 5G networks on their handsets and explained that these users not being able to use it from their Airtel SIMs have nothing to do with the telecom major but the tech giant Apple.

In a statement to the news agency Indian Express, Randeep Sekhon said, “5G on iPhone is not working yet because Apple has to open it. They are promising to open it soon. Apple is currently testing 5G in India; we have set up special networks for them to test.”

He clarified that Airtel will not be sending any Over-the-air or OTA update to iPhones in order to activate 5G on these handsets.

Instead, the manufacturer, which is Apple in this case, will have to push out the software update for enabling 5G services on the 5G network-compatible iPhones.

“You can buy an iPhone 14 today, but 5G will not work until Apple opens it. If you own a 5G-compatible iPhone and an Airtel SIM, it [5G] works. There is no need to change the SIM,” Sekhton said.