Tuesday, 6 August 2013
Airtel is launching 4G services in Delhi in the next few weeks. According to sources, Huawei is most likely to handle the overall rollout plan, design, supply and deploy Airtel's 4G network services in Delhi. Airtel's 4G services are already operational in Kolkata, Bangalore, Pune, Chandigadh, Panchkula and Mohali. It's expected that post-Delhi launch, the next cities/states to get 4G from Airtel will be Mumbai, Kerala and Haryana.
Airtel had won spectrum for high-speed broadband service - Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) - in four telecom services areas of Kolkata, Maharashtra, Punjab and Karnataka in 2010, paying Rs. 3,314.36 crore for it.
Airtel last year acquired 49 percent stake in US telecom major Qualcomm Inc's Indian 4G venture Wireless Business Services (WBS), which gave it entry into the circles of Delhi, Mumbai, Haryana and Kerala.
In the same auction, Reliance Jio Infocomm won 20 Mhz slot for pan-India BWA spectrum for Rs. 12,847.71 crore but the company is yet to roll out services.
Right now, Airtel holds 51 percent stake in WBS and the company plans to completely acquire it by end of next year.
After Delhi, Airtel will launch 4G services in Mumbai and the company is in talks with players such as Huawei and ZTE for network.
4G mobile Internet technology provides download speeds of around 100 Megabits per second (Mbps) on the move and it can go up to 1 Gigabits per second (Gbps) at a fixed location.
