Airtel 4G in Bengaluru next, after Kolkata

Today even as the Union Telecom Minister, Kapil Sibal unveiled the fourth generation (4G) of mobile technology services by Bharti Airtel in Kolkata, making the city, and the service provider the first in the country to bring in the revolutionary technology, rough details about the next state to be in line for the services has been revealed, as well. According to a report by The Hindu, after Kolkata, the southern city of Bengaluru will receive 4G services by Airtel next, roughly in 30 days. Revealing the details was the company's Chief Executive Officer (India and South Asia) Sanjay Kapoor as he addressed the media gathered at the event, held at the ITC Sonar, Kolkata. Although further details about the services to be unveiled in Bengaluru stay slim, today saw Airtel revealing their 4G plans for Kolkata.

In one of our earlier reports detailing on the plans, Airtel's tariff plans were revealed, and they include - Breakfree, Breakfree Max and Breakfree Ultra. The Breakfree plan has a monthly rental of Rs.999 offering 6GB usage, Breakfree Max offers 9GB usage for Rs.1,399 and Breakfree Ultra offers 18GB usage for Rs.1,999. All the plans mentioned offer customers 128 kbps speeds post FUP, in addition to offering introductory 60 days offers for their postpaid users. Reportedly, customers can get their money-back, which is equivalent to one/two month’s rent spread over first six bill cycles like Rs. 167/bill, Rs. 466/bill, Rs. 666/bill, for the first six bills on the Rs.999, Rs.1,399 and Rs.1,999 plans, respectively. The indoor Wi-Fi with CPE is priced at Rs.7,750 and 4G multi mode dongle at Rs.7,999. 

Airtel will bring the phone to India

Elaborating further on the minister's view about the inauguration of 4G services in Kolkata, the report stated, "Mr. Sibal said that a lot of work remains to be done by the industry to make available low cost affordable devices. A true revolution will only come when government data on education, health and public services can also be put on the information super highway."

It had been earlier reported that with the onset of 4G services in the country, subscribers will be able to njoy download speeds of around 100 Megabits per second on the move, which can go up to 1 Gigabits per second, when at a fixed location. Airtel holds BWA spectrum across four telecom circles, namely Kolkata, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Punjab that it won in 2010 after paying Rs.3,314.36 crores.

As aforementioned, the launch has made Bharti Airtel the first service provider in the country to offer 4G LTE TDD services. Although other popular companies, like Reliance Industries Ltd, Tikona Digital Networks Pvt. Ltd., Aircel Ltd, Augere Holdings and Qualcomm Inc. hold BWA licences, like Airtel; they are yet to make an announcement.