Airtel Starts 4G Services in Delhi

India’s leading tele services provider Bharti Airtel is all set to launch its 4G services in Delhi, the capital city of India. Airtel is already provides the fourth generation tele services in Kolkata, Bangalore, Pune and Chandigarh. As a part of expanding the 4G network to Delhi Airtel has entered an agreement with Huawei, which is a Chinese leading manufacturer of systems and equipments to develop the infrastructure and to implement the exchange server equipments. Company officials commented on the reports that "We are planning to launch 4G services in Delhi by September and has selected Huawei for the network,"

Airtel is now concentrating their business on 4G segment and as part of boosting up the 4G operations company has slashed the prices of various 4G plans upto 31 percent. In 2010 Airtel has won spectrum for high speed broadband service and Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) in four telecom services areas of Kolkata, Maharashtra, Punjab and Karnataka. Airtel has invested around Rs. 3314.36 crore for this purpose.

Moreover Airtel has increased its share of 4G coverage in the country by acquiring shares of a US based telecom giant Qualcomm Inc’s Indian 4G company Wireless Business Services (WBS). Airtel has acquired 49 percent of stake in Qualcomm and gets the service circles of Delhi, Mumbai, Haryana and Kerala. Qualcomm had spent Rs. 4,912 crore to win the BWA licence for these circles.

In the 4G auction Reliance Jio Infocomm has also won 20 Mhz slot for pan-India BWA spectrum for Rs. 12,847.71 crore but Reliance has not yet started its 4G operations. Presently Airtel holds 51 percent of share in the country’s WBS and it plans to acquire the rest of the parts by the end of 2014. After completing the 4G service in Delhi, Airtel plans to commence its operations in Mumbai also and the discussions are started with network suppliers like Huawei and ZTE.

By shifting to 4G network, users can experience faster downloading at speeds more than 100Mbps and it can be increased upto 1Gbps at fixed location.