Aircel, India’s prominent telecom provider is fully gearing up to launch 4G LTE services in India by December 2012. In a move to facilitate 4G LTE services Aircel is investing around $500 million (about Rs 2,757 crore) in equipments and others. Aircel holds 4G LTE spectrum license in eight telecom circles which include Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Assam and North East. On the initial phase Aircel will launch the 4G services in Chennai and Tamilnadu telecom circle.
According to Business Standard report, Aircel is planning not only to provide mobile 4G services through dongles and devices but also get into consumer homes by offering high-speed broadband internet, broadcasting, video on demand, education and health care services, among others. In a path to offer the above services it’s already working on creating a fibre optic backbone partly by leasing and partly by investing on its own. We can except the pricing of 4G data plans to be similar to the Aircel 3G data plans.
Malaysian telco Maxis Communications Berhad (which has majority stake in Aircel), CEO Sandip Das said “Our focus is on creating a big data business. We’ll award contracts for 4G equipment soon and launch between October and December. We are putting in $500 million. We’ll be an integrated provider of 4G services.
Aircel is not looking at being an all-India player in 4G or going through acquisitions. It would prefer to be a large data player in certain circles. We have already equalised our 2G and 3G tariffs and have over a million subscribers. With China and India dominating the LTE market, we’ll see prices of devices fall.”
India is seeing more telecom operators phasing out 4G services, Bharti Airtel becoming the first telecom player to launch 4G LTE services in India. Tikona and Reliance the other two operators planning to launch their 4G services by this year.