Starting today, Bharti Airtel the country’s premier telecom operator will begin a trial run of its 4G LTE services in Chennai, allowing bloggers from the said region to experience it first. Moreover, this month will also see the company deploying its 4G network in two other major cities, namely Mumbai and Hyderabad.
The network operator has revealed that it will be starting its 4G trial in Chennai on the 1800MHz band. This has been made possible by a partnership it struck recently with Nokia Networks to use the latter’s airwaves. Hyderabad too will receive its 4G services through the FDD LTE standard on the 1800MHz band.
Mumbai however, falls under another TDD LTE category, even as it will receive the ultra-fast broadband facility through the 2300MHz band. It has been disclosed that trials for Hyderabad and Mumbai have been scheduled to commence by the end of this month.
At the moment, Bharti Airtel has a pretty decent 4G presence in India if compared against other telecom operators. A total of nineteen cities across the country have been brought under the LTE umbrella, with Kolkata, Bengaluru, Pune, Chandigarh and Panchkula being some of them.
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As pointed out by a PTI report cited by The Economic Times, Airtel had said in January this year that it plans to introduce 4G LTE services in Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, North East and Punjab by the end of 2015. On ther other hand the target for Karnataka is February 2016 and for Rajasthan it is April 2016.
Let us now see how the trial run of Bharti Airtel’s 4G LTE services in Chennai turns out.