Bharti Airtel’s 5G service will be available in eight cities from Saturday, its chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said at the India Mobile Congress. With this, Bharti Airtel has become the first company to launch 5G services in the country. “When you (Prime Minister) launch 5G today. 5G from Airtel will be available in 8 cities – Delhi, Mumbai, Varanasi, Bangalore and others,” Mittal said.
He also said that Airtel will launch 5G services in several cities across the country by March 2023 and across India by March 2024.
According to a senior company official, Airtel 5G services will be available at current 4G rates and new rates for 5G will be announced shortly. 5G services are also being launched in Chennai, Hyderabad and Siliguri, the official said.
Bharti Airtel Chief Technology Officer Randeep Singh Sekhon said that the company’s backend infrastructure is ready. “We need to install some equipment on the mobile towers for 5G service. We are doing it gradually. From today the service will be available in the area near the tower where the equipment is installed,” Sekhon added.
He said Airtel is adding new cities for 5G services every day and increasing penetration in cities. “People need to have a 5G phone to access the service, which is launching today,” Sekhon said.
Soon after the auction ended, Bharti Airtel placed orders for 5G gears with Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung. The Sunil Mittal-led firm recently acquired 19,867.8MHz of spectrum in the 900MHz, 1800MHz, 2100MHz, 3300MHz and 26GHz bands, strengthening its spectrum holdings.
In the recent auction, Bharti Airtel bought spectrum worth Rs 43,084 crore.
