Airtel finally has competition for 4G services: Telecom operator Aircel has became the second telco to launch 4G services in the country. The telco said that it will be initially offering 4G services in four circles namely Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar and Odisha. However, it hasn't disclosed any information on the availability or the tariff of its 4G service. Note that Aircel had secured 4G spectrum in eight circles, during the BWA auctions in June 2010. After postponing its 4G rollout to 2014 last year, Aircel had appointed ZTE Corporation for pan-India deployment of its 4G LTE network in January this year. Interestingly, the telco had then mentioned that it will start deploying 4G network in Chennai, Rest of Tamil Nadu followed by a few other business critical circles in the first stage. In May this year, Aircel had also received conditional approval from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to roll out its 4G services in the Tamil Nadu circle. Aircel had apparently sought DoT’s permission in January to launch the service after completing trials in the circle. So, it’s a bit surprising that Tamil Nadu doesn’t figure in the initial phase now. Like Airtel, Aircel will also provide 4G LTE services under the 2300MHz band, which essentially means the service will be limited to select devices which support this band. That being said, its worth noting that Aircel has 2G spectrum in the above mentioned circles and it had also secured 8.20 MHz in the 1800 MHz band for Rs 209.90 crore in the February 2014 auction. Rollout obligations: While there is…
