From Sami Fathi's "Apple Reportedly Set to Roll Out iPhone 5G Support in India in December" posted Tuesday on MacRumors:
Apple will add support for 5G on compatible iPhones for Indian carriers through a software update as soon as December, according to a source familiar with the matter who spoke to ET News.
According to the publication, Apple and the Indian carrier Airtel will meet this week to discuss why Apple's iPhones are not compatible with India's 5G networks. Apple is reportedly already testing 5G support on iPhones in Mumbai and New Delhi, with an update officially adding support possibly being rolled out in December, the report said, citing a source.
A separate report from Reuters says the Indian government is placing pressure on Apple and Samsung to adopt 5G support for their latest smartphones. Apple first added support for 5G with the iPhone 12 in 2020, and two years later, Indian iPhone customers are still unable to use the newer and faster network. On Wednesday, the Indian government, alongside executives from Apple, Samsung, and leading carriers in the country, will meet "to prioritize" adding support for 5G on the latest smartphones.
My take: The subtleties of various radio frequencies and technical implementation details are beyond me. But there must be people at Apple, Qualcomm and the Indian carriers who could sort this out in less than two months.
Now that their protocol is established in country, it’s going to take some doing to make it compatible with the rest of the world. Apple producing iPhone 14 in India will help, but won’t offset the negative impact to native 5G production if they’re forced to compete with the likes of Samsung and Apple (both of which have tiny market shares in India).
I’d look for an India 5G iPhone (that will only work in India) before we see a world compatible 5G in India
“An incompatible 5G protocol would insure that 5G handsets…are made in India…”
So if you travel outside India, you’ll have to own two phones and two watches. Man, that’s stupid. You’re self-hobbling your economy compared to everywhere else.
Unless, of course, the Indian 5G is vastly superior to the 5G outside of India. Does anyone know if that’s the case?
It all goes back to British colonial rule. Manufacturing laws were all written to benefit British made.
An Indian could not manufacture his own cloth: it had to be British made.
An Indian could not manufacture salt: it had to be British made.
When India gained its independence it rewrote those laws and then some, so as to favor Indian manufacture. India’s caste system insured that the elite benefited the most from these laws (even though caste was now illegal).
The rich and powerful in any country/society use their financial influence to remain rich and powerful. India is no different (neither is the US).
This is the wall that Modi keeps bumping into as he tries to modernize India’s economy/society.
It’s also why India’s brightest migrate to the EU and North America in such large numbers. There is little future for them at home under the current system.
India’s market potential was seriously blunted by the extreme difficulty in moving Rupees out of the country, something only recently that has improved.
Intentionally so. I ran into this when trying to import commercial grade telephone systems into the PRC in the 1990s. On the surface their T-1 protocol looked the same as everywhere else. It just didn’t work.
In order to get it to work you had to buy a Chinese protocol converter, that just happened to cost as much as the entire system you were trying to import. The only work around was to sell Chinese made (which was incredibly inferior). It’s been 20 years since I had a presence in China. I don’t know if things have changed. My guess is that VoIP negated China’s “proprietary” standards.
This brings up the question of buying and / or importing smartphones from cheaper or available locations (recall the Indian man who went to Dubai to buy his iPhone 14 Pro Max) and bring them to your host country. Assuming the internal SIM tray or eSIM is compatible, the host country telecom system could be used. Of course, if the country really has protectionist proprietary systems that require country specific models only (Samsung/Android comes to mind), then that option is less likely.