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Norway-based Telenor on Tuesday said that it will launch 4G services commercially in India within the next six months.
Telenor will be the latest entrant in 4G, apart from Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular, which are already deploying 4G services in their circles, wherein Reliance Jio will also be launching the service later this year.
The company launched a pilot project last week (Friday) in Varanasi and depending on the outcome (of the project), it will launch 4G services in five-eight cities across its six circles. “We already have long term evolution (LTE) in Varanasi. The network is on a very narrow band,” Sigve Brekke, Chief Executive Officer of Telenor, told BusinessLine here on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress 2016.
Talking about the technology, he said the company will be using narrow band LTE (1.4MHz) for the 4G services across all its six circles, including Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.
On the company’s future plans, Sigve said that competition is going to be tougher with Reliance Jio entering the 4G market later this year.
“India is by far the biggest market for us and competition is big there. Even the big ones (operators) are struggling with their profitability and with Reliance Jio’s entry, the competition will intensify further,” he said.
Therefore, to be in competition, he said Telenor is upgrading all its technologies in place.
“We have not only liberalised spectrum, but have also just upgraded entire network technology and that’s why we are able to launch 4G in Varanasi on only 1.4MHz. The problem is not technology, the problem is not liberalised spectrum, the problem is that we need more spectrum,” he said.
Asked about getting more spectrum, Sigve said that a lot of momentum is going on and Telenor is still considering bidding in the upcoming spectrum auction. Having said that, he added, “We need more spectrum to be able to take data growth and there are two ways of doing that – buy spectrum or participate in the auction.”
However, he clarified that the company will decide on participating in the upcoming auction once it was clear on the reserve prices that may come by the end of March or early April.
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