NEW DELHI: Telecom service provider Bharti Airtel on Thursday said Airtel 5G plus has gone live in several top cities including Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Siliguri, Nagpur and Varanasi. The company said the customers in these cities will start enjoying the 5G services in a phased manner, as the company continues to construct its network and complete the roll-out. The users won’t have to change SIM as existing Airtel 4G SIM is 5G enabled.
“Today marks one more step in our journey as we build out the finest network to deliver the best experience for our customers. For us, our customers are at the core of everything we do. Our solution will, therefore, work on any 5G handset and the existing SIM that customers have. Our obsession with customer experience is now embellished with a 5G solution that is kinder to the environment,” Gopal Vittal, managing director and CEO of Bharti Airtel.
On the pricing issue, India’s second-largest telco said customers can enjoy 5G services on their existing data plans until roll-out is complete. It means Airtel will decide pricing of the 5G service only after deploying it in the entire country. According to the company, Airtel 5G Plus has three compelling advantages for customers including promise to deliver the best experience – between 20 to 30 times higher speeds than today coupled with brilliant voice experience and super-fast call connect.
Airtel Airtel spent `43,040 crore in 5G spectrum auction to acquire 19867.8 MHz spectrum in 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100MHz, 3300 MHz and 26 GHz frequency bands. Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal, at the launch of 5G event said Airtel will roll out its 5G service in the country by March 2024. Its competitor Reliance Jio launched the beta trial of its True-5g services for Jio users in four cities Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Varanasi.
The company will roll out 5G services nationwide by December 2024. However, the third-largest Indian telco Vodafone Idea hasn’t given any timeline for rolling out its 5G service. Kumar Mangalam Birla, the promoter of Vodafone Idea, said the company will soon begin the 5G rollout in the country.