At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February 2017, the Chinese company ZTE unveiled the world’s first 5G smartphone. Named Gigabyte Phone.
The download speed of this phone was claimed to be one Gbps. Thousands of 5G phones have gone public in the last five years. There is no counting how many 5G smartphones became public in Nepal alone.
But mobile and telecommunication service providers have not yet launched 5G services in Nepal. Even so, owning one is still beyond the reach of the average person.
When will 5G be public in Nepal?
It has been almost a year since the government decided to allow Nepal Telecom to start 5G service as a trial. Accordingly, the regulatory Nepal Telecommunication Authority has already written to Nepal Telecom for the same.
Not only this, the frequency for testing has also been set aside. But Nepal Telecom is confused as the materials brought for testing will not be returned.
However, the company is in talks with suppliers to test the 5G service. But no concrete achievement has been made in that.
No hearing has been held even after another telecom service provider Ncell sought permission for the 5G test. In the current situation where the trial has not started yet, it is certain that it will take many more years for the 5G technology to come into commercial operation.
Don’t buy a 5G smartphone right now?
Some of you may still have a 5G phone. Smartphone manufacturers are marketing their phones as worthy smartphones for the future.
Some may even advise you to buy a 5G smartphone when buying a new smartphone. Do you think that following the same advice, there were those who bought the 5G smartphone two years ago? Now the age of their smartphone is coming to an end. But the fate of those smartphones is not written in 5G.
So, before the launch of 5G mobile service, there is no point in buying a smartphone that supports 5G. Because smartphones that support 5G are more expensive than those that support Forge. Even if you get a cheap 5G smartphone, you have to bargain for some features and specifications. You can get a better Forge smartphone at the same price as buying a 5G smartphone.
You may have seen the condition of Nepal Telecom in Forge service. If you do not have a smartphone that supports 800 MHz band, then you will not be able to use Nepal Telecom’s Forge service properly.
Even if it works well in the city, it may not work well in the rural areas. Similarly, it has not been decided in which frequency band the local telecom company will launch 5G service in Nepal tomorrow.
So even if you buy a 5G smartphone now, there is no guarantee that you will be able to use 5G in it tomorrow. And another thing is that when companies like Nepal Telecom and Ncell launch 5G services in the market, then many users will be tempted to buy 5G smartphones.
In this way, there will be fierce competition among the smartphone makers in the market and 5G smartphones will be available to buy at very cheap prices. So when buying a smartphone, there may not be much justification for running after a 5G smartphone right now.
