NEW DELHI: Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Mittal on Saturday said Airtel will launch its 5G services in eight cities from today. These cities include Mumbai, Varanasi, Bangalore and Mumbai.
While speaking at the launch of 5G technology in the county at the India Mobile Congress, Mittal said that Airtel would roll out 5G services in most cities by March 2023 and the entire county by March 2023.
“Airtel will deploy 5G services across most cities by March 2023 and across the country by March 2024,” said Mittal.
Mittal further said Airtel started 4G in India, but Mukesh’s (Jio) gave tremendous speed to countrywide 4G proliferation and forced us to run fast to catch up.
Weeks back, in a letter to the customer, CEO of Airtel Gopal Vittal said the telco is expected to cover all of urban India by 2023. “We expect to launch our 5G services within a month.
By December, we should have coverage in the key metros. After that, we will expand rapidly to cover the entire country. We expect to cover all of urban India by the end of 2023,” said Vittal in a letter.
India’s second-largest telco, Airtel spent Rs. 43,040 crores in a 5G spectrum auction to acquire a 19867.8 MHz spectrum in 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100MHz, 3300 MHz and 26 GHz frequency bands.
Unlike its competitor Reliance Jio, Airtel gave a miss to the coveted 700 MHz airwaves, which can provide 6-10 kilometres of signal range with one tower, and forms a good base for 5G.
The country’s largest telco, Reliance Jio will roll out its 5G services in India by Diwali. The company pledged to invest 2 Lakh crore for 5G services. The debt-laden Vodafone Idea Limited is yet to spell its 5G plans.