India telecom operator Bharti Airtel today said it has doubled mobile sites across the country in two years – as part of building a future ready network.
Airtel, the telecom business promoted by Sunil Mittal, has deployed 180,000 mobile sites in the last two years – fiscal 2016 and fiscal 2017. Interestingly, Airtel deployed nearly 180,000 sites in the first 20 years of its operations in India.
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Airtel has 23.58 percent market share in the Indian wireless space. Bharti Airtel has been the undisputed leader in the Indian telecom market ever since India allowed the entry of private companies into telecom business.
Last month, Mukesh Ambani, who is promoting Reliance Jio Infocomm, said the Indian company would add another 100,000 telecom towers in the coming months to enhance the 4G coverage. Reliance Jio has already deployed 100,000 telecom towers.
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Airtel, the number one telecom operator base on subscriber base and revenue, has made significant investment in network coverage to leverage its robust spectrum portfolio and create capacity to lead India’s data growth story.
Thanks to its huge investment in offering 4G and 3G services in all 22 circles, Airtel has been rated as the fastest mobile network in India by Ookla – the global leader in mobile speed tests.
In November 2015, Bharti Airtel launched Project Leap, its network transformation program to build a future ready network. The company has committed an investment of Rs 60,000 crore over three years under this program.
Airtel has doubled its transmission capacity and increased the mobile backhaul capacity by eight times to roll out high speed broadband network with 4G and 3G coverage in all 22 telecom circles.
The telecom operator has also added 14,500 KM of fibre to national fibre backbone along with 3666 new fibre POP nodes, the highest ever deployed in Airtel network in single year.
“This deployment will leverage our spectrum capacity and is yet another benchmark by Airtel in execution excellence. We are in a position to ramp up future capacity on this network very quickly, giving us unmatched reach and agility,” said Abhay Savargaonkar, director – Networks, Bharti Airtel.
Baburajan K
