With mobile handset market growing exponentially every year and the demand for superior mobile services is also on the rise. To cater this Airtel, India’s largest telecom operator, has launched 4G service in Kolkata. Airtel is the first company in India to launch this service and it was launched by the Mr Kapil Sibal, Union Telecom and IT Minister. Excited Sunil Mittal, Chairman and MD said, Today’s launch is a major milestone for India and Airtel. High speed wireless broadband has the potential to transform India, provide a robust platform for building the country’s digital economy and truly empower people.”
India is still to completely implement 3G services across the country and with the launch of 4G the scenario has changed completely. 4G LTE or long term evolution is a high speed broadband service with almost ten time’s speed that is available with today’s services. But to the dismay of many it is launched in Kolkata city only. But soon other cities will see the implementation of this service. 4G service offers quick and speedy services like high definition video streaming, chatting in groups, instant upload and download of photos and video, playing online games etc. This technology can also play a key role for e-learning purpose. The download speed of 4G is 100mbps almost 5 times the current speed of 3G, that’s a significant improvement. Airtel uses advanced TD-LTE technology making it first company in the world to successfully deploy this process for commercial purpose.
Though features of 4G are music to your ears but same cannot be said about its tariff plans. Since Airtel has got the first mover advantage over its competitor and since it is the first company to launch this service the tariffs are bound to be on higher side. At present they are offering three plans each for prepaid and postpaid starting at Rs 999 for 6GB of data and for 9 GB data you will have to shell out Rs 1399 like for 18 GB the charges are Rs 1999. To make the offer more attractive they are also offering money back plans on monthly billing.
Although Airtel has got first mover advantage in offering 4G services over its competition but we need to wait and watch who all are going to follow the suit.
