5g phone price: Telcos, phone makers tying up for affordable 5G rollout

As 5G roll out draws near, telcos and smartphone companies are looking to collaborate and provide options for affordable ownership of 5G phones, and connections, industry executives and handset makers said.

They added that simply subsidising the device cost and offering a 5G connection may not be enough or easy. Carriers are thus exploring bundling in unlimited data, OTT services, and gaming, among others, to lure users, especially the higher paying ones.

Realme India chief executive Madhav Sheth said that the company is working with

for its C-series models.

“We are already working with telcos closely for testing 5G services, along with exploring bundling offers for consumers. We have already started doing that with for our C-series smartphones,” Sheth said. “These are data add-ons, cashback, etc. Any Airtel user gets ₹750 off when buying the Realme C30.”

Eventually, Sheth added, the company will try to apply the same strategy with multiple devices.

Other smartphone brands are yet to announce such partnerships or offers but the likes of Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo and Samsung have said previously that they are working with telcos on various consumer use cases.

Jio, Bharti Airtel and besides handset brands Realme and Oppo didn’t respond to ET’s queries. Samsung, Xiaomi and Vivo declined to comment.