Bharti Airtel said it plans to add 10,000 new mobile sites in West Bengal to increase network capacity for data and voice services.
India’s largest telecom operator’s network transformation initiative – as part of the Project Leap investment program – will result into the addition of one new mobile site per hour to Airtel’s future-ready network in West Bengal.
Bharti Airtel has 17.639 million mobile phone customers in West Bengal as compared with 21.586 million for Vodafone, 7.157 million for Reliance Jio, 6.238 million for Idea Cellular, and 1.735 million for BSNL.
Airtel in West Bengal
# Rolled out 7,200 plus sites in fiscal 2017-18
# Added 1,100 kms optical fibre in fiscal 2017-18
# Launched Airtel VoLTE services in Kolkata in December 2017
# Airtel coverage reached 51,000 towns and villages across Bengal
Airtel said the roll-out of new mobile sites will augment the number of cellular sites in West Bengal by 35 percent, taking the total number of sites to 38,000. Airtel will add 2,000 kms of fresh fiber, taking the total optical fiber coverage to 17,000 kms to enable high speed data transmission in West Bengal.
Airtel said it will also start the deployment of pre-5G Massive MIMO technology in Kolkata to enhance speed data experience to its wireless customers.
Airtel will deploy the Massive MIMO technology at major business hubs and residential locations in the Kolkata city. Airtel’s telecom engineers are expecting that Massive MIMO technology will expand network capacity by 5-7 times over the same spectrum, and delivers superfast data speeds despite large number of concurrent users at the same location.
Airtel had recently deployed the solution at Eden Gardens during the IPL 2018 and received positive customer feedback.
“Airtel has pioneered the rollout of Massive MIMO in India and we will now undertake wide scale deployments of the cutting-edge technology in key business and residential hubs across Kolkata,” Sameer Anjaria, chief executive officer – West Bengal & Odisha, Bharti Airtel, said.
