Bharti Airtel has commissioned Nokia Networks to expand its 4G presence to a further 6 of India’s 22 telecom circles.
The deal marks India’s first FDD-LTE deployment on the 1800MHz band. Nokia already supplies Bharti Airtel’s TD-LTE network, and will also deploy TD-LTE on the 2300MHz band in 2 other circles.
Abhay Savargaonkar, CTO, Bharti Airtel, said: “Having already launched the high-speed 4G services across four circles of India, we are now looking at extending this enriching high-speed broadband experience to new circles on 1800 MHz band.”
Sandeep Girotra, Vice President and Head of India Region, Nokia Networks, said: “Our rich experience gained in deploying FDD-LTE and TD-LTE to operators around the globe will ensure a fast and smooth network rollout, while our Flexi Zone solution will ensure the best possible LTE performance even in dense areas.”
The continuing demand for ever more mobile capacity is driven largely by growing use of video. As people from all walks of life start to use media more intensively, another issue is their continually rising expectations of throughput and service - by 2020, a typical mobile user can consume 1 GB of data per day. LTE provides a foundation to meet these demands.
