Sunil Bharti Mittal chairman and founder of telecom operator Bharti Airtel at India Mobile Congress 2022 announced that 5G service will be available in eight cities from Saturday. 5G services are expected to be launched in Delhi, Varanasi, Nagpur, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai and Siliguri. At present, 5G connection is only available at Delhi IGI airport.
The 5G services were launched on October 1, 2022 and as per the plan, the services will be available to customers in an organized and phased manner. Keeping this in mind, Airtel is expecting to roll out 5G services in several cities across the country by March 2023 and a pan India rollout by March 2024.
As per reports only some parts of the city will receive the services for now. However, the telecom company has already placed the order for 5G gears with Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung after the auctions were over earlier this year.
Airtel has stated that all its existing 4G SIMs will be compatible with the 5G network and the 5G services will initially be available at the current 4G rates. The new tariff scheme for 5G will be announced later.
During the 5G spectrum auctions held in August 2022, Airtel acquired 19,867.8 MHZ spectrum worth Rs 43,084 crore in 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 3300 MHz and 26 GHz bands, bolstering its spectrum holding.
