Airtel said its 5G service is available in all districts of India, while rival telco Jio’s 5G network has already reached over 7,700 towns and cities.
India’s two largest telcos, Reliance Jio Infocomm and Bharti Airtel, have been rapidly expanding their 5G networks since first launching the technology in October 2022, but have run into financial difficulties. Vodafone Idea, which owns the company, continues to strive to launch 5G in the coming months. .
Bharti Airtel
Indian telecom operator Bharti Airtel recently announced that its 5G service called ‘Airtel 5G Plus’ is already available in all districts and union territories of India.
Bharti Airtel had earlier announced that it reached 50 million unique 5G customers on its network in September. Airtel has rolled out 5G services in 5,000 towns and 20,000 villages across India and plans to cover the entire country with the technology by March 2024, said company president Sunil Bharti Mittal. announced.
Airtel currently uses equipment from Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung to offer its 5G service. Indian telecom operators had secured a total of 19,800 MHz of spectrum in the 900MHz, 1.8GHz, 2.1GHz, 3.3GHz and 26GHz bands in the previous auction conducted by the Indian government. The telco is offering 5G via the 5G NSA architecture.
In August, Bharti Airtel announced that its 5G FWA product called Airtel Xstream AirFiber is now available to customers in Delhi and Mumbai. The carrier said the new service, which brings internet to consumers in fiber-optic areas, will address last-mile connectivity issues in both rural and urban India, where access to fiber-optic infrastructure is a challenge. He said he would deal with it.
Airtel says Xstream AirFiber is a plug-and-play device with built-in Wi-Fi 6 technology that provides wide indoor coverage and can connect up to 64 devices simultaneously. Airtel said it plans to launch the service in multiple cities and expand it across the country in phases.
Reliance Jio Infocom
Reliance Jio Infocomm has been rapidly expanding its 5G network using Standalone (SA) architecture since October 2022. According to the telco’s website, the telco has already rolled out his 5G services in his 7,764 cities across 36 states in India.
Reliance Jio had earlier secured a mix of radio spectrum for 5G across 700 MHz, 3.5 GHz and 26 GHz bands. Jio is the only Indian operator with spectrum in the 700 MHz band.
In September, local press reported that Reliance Jio Infocomm had secured the largest loan with French bank BNP Paribas as the lead underwriter for the initiative to help finance the purchase of 5G network equipment from Swedish vendor Ericsson. It has been confirmed that they are aiming to raise $2 billion.
Reliance Jio Infocomm’s 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) service is called JioAirFiber and is already commercially available in 514 cities across 25 states across India.
JioAirFiber serves Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Kerala, Bihar, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, It is available in Mizoram, Maharashtra, Odisha, Nagaland and Tamil Nadu. , Rajasthan, Tripura, Telangana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
The company announced that it will launch 5G FWA services in eight cities nationwide in September.
vodafone ideas
According to recent reports, Indian carrier Vodafone Idea is already offering 5G services in some locations in Pune and Delhi.
The information was reportedly provided by the company on its website. However, the carrier has not yet made any official announcement regarding the launch of 5G services. At the moment, Vodafone Idea has not officially revealed its 5G rollout plans.
Vodafone Idea said on its website that Vodafone users can “experience seamless connectivity with VI 5G Ready SIM” in select areas of Pune and Delhi.
In August, Vodafone Idea successfully tested 5G services in Pune using both 26 GHz and 3.3 GHz bands to meet minimum deployment obligations stipulated by the Indian Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
Vodafone Idea confirmed in June that it had held “high-level discussions” with a number of vendors to define the final strategy for 5G deployment in India. In the carrier’s annual report, the company also said it has completed device testing for all major OEMs in its upcoming 5G mobile broadband network.
Vodafone Idea has partnered with various OEMs to test the compatibility of 5G devices available in its 5G clusters in the cities of Delhi and Pune. “The company is committed to rolling out its 5G to consumers. The rollout will be accelerated once the funding is completed,” Vodafone Idea previously said.
Vodafone also said it was negotiating financing with local banks to secure the funds needed to launch 5G.
