10.4.12

Airtel launches 4G in Kolkata





Communications and IT minister Kapil Sibal on Tuesday said that 3G services have not been a success in the country so far. "3G has not delivered so far. The operators have paid huge money to get the bandwidth but they are not able to build the required infrastructure due to illiquidity," Sibal said at the launch of Airtel's 4G LTE services.
3G, or third generation services, which were launched in the country a couple years ago are estimated to have over 10 million subscribers as per global industry body GSMA. The total mobile subscriber base in India is around 900 million. Sibal said the government was committed to empower people with the help of telecom and whose role would only be confined to that of a facilitator. "We are announcing the telecom policy in May and the IT and electronics policy sometime this month," Sibal said.
Referring to 4G LTE launch by Airtel, he said that it was basically Broadband Wireless Access (BWA). "Real 4G will come when 700 Mhz bandwidth is made available. Hopefully we will get by this financial year," Sibal said.

"We will launch the 4G LTE service in Bangalore this month, followed by Pune and Chandigarh," Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Mittal said here today.Mittal said that the TD-LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology adopted by Airtel would be the platform for future broadband revolution."We hope that this technology would be emulated and followed by those who got Braodband Wireless Access (BWA) licenses," he said at the launch event.The network for rolling out Airtel's 4G LTE services in the city had been built by Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE. Airtel is the first mobile operator to launch 4G services in the country.The other company which got the BWA licence for Kolkata circle was Reliance Industries-owned Infotel.The first mobile service was also launched in Kolkata in 1995.

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