New Delhi: Telecom operator Bharti Airtel will start rolling out 5G services this month and will cover all towns and major rural areas in the country by March 2024, a senior company official said on Tuesday. Gopal Vittal, Managing Director and CEO of Bharti Airtel also said that the price of mobile services India Too low and needs to go up.
“We intend to launch 5G from August and very soon intend to roll out across India. We are confident that we will be able to cover every city and major rural areas with 5G.” In fact, Detailed network rollout plans for 5,000 cities. India is all set. This will be one of the biggest rollouts in our history,” Vittal said during the company’s earnings call.
Bharti Airtel acquired 19,867.8 MHz frequencies by acquiring a pan-India footprint of 3.5 GHz and 26 GHz bands in the recently concluded spectrum auction and selected to purchase radio waves in the low and mid-band spectrum for a total consideration of Rs 43,040 crore. did.
Vittal said the company’s capital expenditure would remain around current levels and reduced the need to purchase premium spectrum in the 700 MHz band, which requires a smaller number of mobile towers for coverage than other bands, which are currently with telecom operators.
“We don’t have that much mid-band spectrum in our competition. Remember that if we didn’t have such a huge chunk of precious mid-band spectrum, we would have no choice but to buy the expensive 700 MHz spectrum.
“And once we had bought it, we would have had to have bigger power radios on this band. Not only would the cost be higher, but it would also have resulted in more carbon emissions,” Vittal said. He added that the network’s deployment in the 700 MHz band does not provide any additional coverage compared to the company’s 900 MHz spectrum band.
Vittal said that non-standalone (NSA) 5G networks have more benefits than standalone 5G networks because of the wider coverage and more devices are available to access the network. He said that in the US and South Korea, where both SA (standalone) and NSA have been launched, traffic on SA is less than 10 percent of total 5G traffic.
“The third advantage of this mode is that it allows us to use existing 4G technology at no additional cost because we already have radio and spectrum that is live on our network. Finally, the last of the NSA. The benefits are all around the experience that it will allow for faster call connect times over voice.
Furthermore, it allows us to provide faster uplinks than anyone else given our huge spectrum holdings in the mid band. Country’s largest telecom company Jio claims to have completed 5G coverage plans and field trials in top 1,000 cities. It is the only player in its domestic 5G telecom gear to have bought premium 700 MHz spectrum.
Vittal said Airtel has recorded an industry-leading average revenue per user of Rs 183 and expects it to reach Rs 200 and eventually Rs 300 soon due to the increase in tariffs. Bharti Airtel has reported a more than five-fold increase in its consolidated profit to Rs 1,607 crore for the quarter ended June 2022, mainly on account of hike in tariffs as compared to profit of Rs 283.5 crore in the same period a year ago. ,
Bharti Airtel’s consolidated revenue from operations grew nearly 22 per cent to Rs 32,805 crore from Rs 26,854 crore in the previous quarter. Bharti Airtel India revenue grew 24 per cent to Rs 23,319 crore as against Rs 18,828.4 crore in Q1 FY22.
Bharti Airtel’s mobile service revenue in India grew 27 per cent year-on-year to Rs 18,220 crore from Rs 14,305.6 crore. The company incurred a capital expenditure of Rs 5,288 crore in India and Rs 1,088 crore in Africa.
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