Airtel Launches 5G Services Across 8 Locations, Ahead Of Rival Jio

Bharti Enterprises Chairman Sunil Mittal on Saturday announced the rollout of Airtel’s 5G services across eight cities in India. This made the telco the very first company to launch 5G services in India.

Speaking at the IMC 2022, Mittal said that Airtel is launching its 5G services in eight cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Varanasi, Bengaluru. 

Chennai, Hyderabad and Siliguri are the other three cities where the company’s 5G services will be made available.

Airtel will be expanding its services to more cities across India by March 2023 and intends to cover the whole country by March 2024.

The second largest telco will avail its 5G services at 4G rates for now. But will introduce new tariffs shortly, according to media reports.

Airtel has collaborated with Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung to build its 5G infrastructure. The company had acquired spectrum worth Rs 43,084 crore in the recently concluded 5G auction, where it acquired 19867.8 MHz spectrum in 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 3300 MHz, and 26 GHz frequency.

Commenting on the 5G launch, Sanjeev Barnwal, Founder & CTO, Meesho said, “After much anticipation, 5G services have finally been launched in India. The months ahead will undoubtedly see an increase in data consumption as all smartphone users wait to experience the magic of 5G”. 

Meanwhile, Jio has said that it will launch 5G telephony services across India by December 2023. The company had earlier made an announcement of Rs 2 lakh crore to build its 5G presence in India.

“There’s no doubt that such a revolutionary technology will not only help in the digitisation of millions of small businesses in the country, but also provide impetus to our government’s goal of becoming a 5 trillion-dollar economy by 2025”, Barnwal added.