5G To Provide Boost To Cloud Gaming: Sachin Kalantri, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Qualcomm

The Indian Mobile Congress 2022, the event that officially inaugurated the rollout of 5G in the Indian telecom sphere has finally concluded. Despite the fact that the event was a house-full extravagance filled with media personnel as well as the general public, BW Businessworld managed to strike a conversation with Sachin Kalantri, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Qualcomm and this is how the conversation went. 

Q: How important is finding real-world applications of the newly launched 5G technology? 

See, the power of technology becomes great when people start using it for meaningful purposes. If you look at the technological evolution of 5G, people measure it on the basis of speed but that is not the only criteria. That is just for technical people. For Society and for the consumers, it's much more than that in terms of what the user experience is going to enable and what kind of apps, services and features 5G is going to enable. When 4G came into being, a lot of people were questioning it. They argued why did we need 4G when 3G was good enough. Now, with 5G no one is asking these questions. 

This is because people have understood the power of technology and they know that something 5G can bring a lot of new experiences for them. 

Now let’s talk about immediate benefits. 5G will essentially relieve people from the congestion in the network. Since people will migrate to 5G networks, the 4G network will also free up. So, it's a win-win. That's the immediate outcome. Additionally, we need to think about what can we provide and what new things can happen with it. That is what we have to think about and start immediately. Luckily, in India, we have more than 800 MHz of spectrum. Operators have taken even 1 GHz that can enable beautiful wireless fibre experience at home and for small enterprises, which is basically where either there is no fibre or where fibre is not reachable. 

In addition to that, when it comes to apps and services, there is a global ecosystem developing around new technologies such as the Metaverse. Now what kind of user experiences those will bring to consumers as well as to enterprises, is still to be seen. However, it is going in that direction already

Whenever you are looking at enhancing the user experience, obviously, a faster download is a very imminent thing. It will happen. Cloud gaming, for example, will be a very good use case for 5G. It ensures that even without high-end equipment, users can now get a high-end gaming experience because you don't have to have a lot of processing done. You can do it on the cloud and stream the game from the cloud itself. As long as you have a good video processor, codec screen and audio system you can get a seamless gaming experience through the cloud.

Other use cases of this kind will come in the field of entertainment and productivity to improve the quality of the work done. 

Q: Gaming is set to be a USD 5 billion business by 2025 in India. How do you see gaming benefiting from this technology? 

So, there are two pointers I would like to share. One thing is obviously, we talked about cloud gaming. Secondly, low latency in communication is extremely important. If I have better connectivity, I'm probably reacting faster, right? Maybe your response times are similar, but as a gamer, you don't want to get tied down because of the technology. 

So that's going to be a very important aspect when it comes to 5G technology. Downloading heavy games will not be a big pain point as well. You don't have to store everything locally. Users will be able to store data on the cloud because that will be quick. 

We have a lot of eSports viewing in the country too. Giving streamers a broader and faster channel will lead to a better quality of content streaming. I believe all these things are bound to change. 

Q: Now that 5G is rolling out and the proverbial cat is out of the bag, where does Qualcomm see itself in the present scenario? 

So, we've been sort of the lead organization in terms of creating the 5G ecosystem globally. First known 5G deployments started happening in 2019. Now, our platforms were ready even before that and we have worked with operators as well as OEMs globally. 

So, we have a vast experience in terms of how the technology works in real-world scenarios. We will bring that 5G experience here locally. We will also ensure that the features that are required to make this transition from 4G to 5G successful are there. So, how do we make it seamless? That will be another focus area for us and then of course, as India-specific use cases evolve, our services will also continue to expand.