Services provider Bharti Airtel launched its 4G services in Gujarat by rolling out services from Ahmedabad. It has been rolled out using spectrum band of 1800 MHz. Customer will be able to access 4G connectivity across smartphones, 4G MiFi and dongles with prepaid and postpaid plans. Upgrade to 4G SIM would allow existing customers to continue to use Airtel 4G on their existing 3G plans.
Murthy Chaganti, CEO, Gujarat, Bharti Airtel Limited said, “We are launching 4G services for our customers across India in a staggered manner and will be rolling out 4G to all the other big cities of Gujarat like Gandhinagar, Surat, Vadodara, Gandhidham, Rajkot, Bhuj in the next 3 months. With close to a crore customers in Gujarat, every day we are adding more number of customers to 4G. The recent usage of data services is 25 percent in Gujarat while earlier it was predominantly voice.”
Gujarat has been ranked third among Indian states in the ‘overall Internet readiness’ index as per the report published by the Internet and Mobile Association of India and Indicus Analytics. Based on this report Chaganti added, “This survey outcome shows that internet penetration is high and the ecosystem is good and the entire population is more ready towards e-governance and e-movement and internet usage. This survey was about e-governance readiness, e-education readiness and with respect to all these elements the state is ready. As per the outcome of a research that was conducted 72 per cent customers among those surveyed wanted to buy a 4G handsets in the next 6-12 months and definitely therefore we are launching 4G today.”
Airtel also announced a new 4G offer of 10 GB 4G data for Rs 249 with any new 4G handset they purchase for prepaid customers. 1 GB data will be instantly credited to the customer’s account and the additional 9 GB data can access by sending the SMS 4G Offer to 52141. With this launch Airtel 4G is now available in 17 circles, including 406 towns and cities in the country.