Bharti Airtel has announced plans to expand its mobile data footprint in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana this financial year. At a media briefing on Wednesday, Avneet Singh, CEO, Bharti Airtel (AP & Telangana), said Airtel plans to roll out 15,000 new mobile sites in the two States and deploy pre-5G massive MIMO technology across major business and residential hubs.

“Currently, 18,000 km of optical fibre exists, and we plan to add more than 3,000 km as a backbone for our towers,” he added. Most of this new fibre will be located in the rural areas to facilitate better connectivity.

Airtel had recently deployed the MIMO technology at Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad during IPL 2018. The technology expands network capacity by 5-7 times and delivers super-fast speeds despite a large number of concurrent users.

Talking about the merger with Telenor, Singh promised an increase in network speeds within the next 60 days.

“The Telenor spectrum will help us to a great extent, allowing us to provide better services,” he said. Asked about the poor reception and speed in many areas, he said that Airtel is working on it by investing more in technology to keep up with the exponential internet usage by customers.

(The writer is an intern with BL in Hyderabad)

comment COMMENT NOW