Bharti Airtel will kick start its 4G services in Kolkata this month, hoping to be the first mobile operator to offer 4G services in the country. We had previously heard that Airtel was planning to launch the services last month, but it appears that Airtel now plans to launch the 4G services this month, starting with Kolkata. The announcement about the launch was made by Bharti Airtel CEO, Sanjay Kapoor, at a GSMA event in Delhi. Although, details of Airtel’s rollout plans are still unclear as of today. In June 2010, Airtel had secured BWA spectrum in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Punjab and Kolkata for a total consideration of Rs. 3314.36 crores during the Broadband Wireless Access spectrum auction. It had appointed Nokia Siemens Networks, Huawei, Ericsson and more recently, ZTE to build and operate its TD-LTE (time division duplex long term evolution) network in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Punjab and Kolkata respectively. What About RIL's 4G Services? With this announcement in mind, its quite disappointing to note that RIL hasn't revealed its 4G service rollout strategy yet, considering that it’s been almost close to two years that the company had acquired pan-India BWA spectrum through the acquisition of Infotel Broadband services. Infotel Broadband services had won BWA spectrum in all 22 circles in the country for Rs 12,847.77 crore during the 2010 BWA auctions. Last week, RIL had stated that it will be kick staring its 4G service trials in Jamnagar before rolling out the service nationwide. Prior to that, reports had then suggested that it will be offering low cost high-speed broadband services based on a 4G network deployment…
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