Airtel began its 4G operations in the country starting from Kolkata as India’s first operator to roll out commercial 4G-LTE services. As of now Airtel offers only data services over 4G network, and offers a multimode 4G-LTE dongle (Huawei E392) and a Indoor WiFi CPE (Huawei B593). More details of Airtel 4G plans and devices can be found here.
We, team telecomtalk did get a chance to make an exclusive review of Airtel 4G at their corporate office at Infinity Building, Saltlake, Kolkata.
Airtel 4G LTE Dongle:
Earlier I mentioned that the dongle is only 4G supported as I heard from Airtel officials at launch event, but there it was clarified that Huawei E392 is a multimode dongle and supports 2G/3G and 4G. In the launch event the dongle was presented there was a ZTE single mode dongle as a test dongle.
Using the dongle is pretty straight forward, just plug it to computer’s USB slot and automatically driver and dialer UI will be installed. In case you have installed Huawei Mobile Partner v23 on your computer it will auto-start after you plug in the dongle. You can create the profile on the dialer UI using APN ‘airtelgprs.com’, and connect to internet.
At Airtel office I was getting signal strength RSSI -71dBm, which is better than 3G signals of many operators (>= 51dBm is best signal strength).
Speedtest results were impressive ones, with Indian servers ping less than 100ms, download speeds 15Mbit/s+ and upload speed is around 4Mbit/s. With the servers abroad download speed was around 10Mbit/s and upload was around 1Mbit/s, while ping was >200ms.
As speedtest results vary a lot, I downloaded some stuffs via Internet Download Manager.
On IDM speed is good enough – 1.91Mbit/s was the peak download speed.
The video was recorded during some files being downloaded from the internet
As Network was running in background, Speed Meter shows peak download speed is 1.91MB/s i.e. nearly 16Mbps.
HD Video Streaming
To test this, I chose a 1080p video on YouTube and started playing. I often dragged the video forward – buffering was just for few seconds (less than 10 seconds). While you are watch HD 720p experience will be smoother than this.
Airtel has already started working for 4G network coverage expansion over Kolkata. To the extreme north, Airtel 4G will reach upto Bandel with few areas uncovered. Airtel is working on Phase I & II 4G coverage expansion to provide robust 4G coverage over the metro.
Verdict:
Airtel 4G uses a not-so-mature 4G technology, LTE-TDD. The ecosystem behind LTE-TDD is also very much pre-mature. But worldwide LTE is the major technology which is shown huge interest and investment by global telecom operators. In 2 years LTE will be very mature as commercial deployment will increase. I tested it indoor, and find that speed on average more than 15Mbit/s, that’s too on wireless. That’s impressive, as that time with me there are another 4 Airtel officials were accessing Airtel 4G from the same room.
Now with 8K device/initial cost, 4G is right now not for aam admi. But this is the way technology works; it will be mature as well as cheaper to everyone’s reach. Airtel 4G tariff is better than CDMA operators’ Rev B tariff (Tata Photon Max offers 3GB+Unlimited 1X at Rs 1000 and MTS MBlaze Ultra is limited to Jaipur only). Those who like to download a huge, for them fiber is still best option, but those are looking for speed [Need for Speed] on wireless 4G is surely for them.
Deepak Gulati December 15, 2012 at 1:27 am
Hi,
I have an Airtel 4G connection in pune. The sales guy told me that the tower is in my society while taking the connection. I went ahead with it and today after a wifi router which cost me nearly 5500 + running a wire a from the sweet spot to my work station another 2000 i have nearly lost 7500 in the whole ordeal. Today nothing works. I get frequent disconnections( 20 to 25 minutes and i am disconnected) My complaints to the customer care has been just pushed between their two teams which is Network and the other is home visit engineers. They now tell me that the site is 500 mtrs away from house and thats the reason i am facing this issue. The network team had tha audacity to to tell me to suspend my account till they dont get adequate conenctivity in my area. On my call to the customer care today i ralised that i have played online games and the charge is another 6oo for that. I would have loved to play games but not on a connection which i could not even use. My guess is under the prtext of testing the visiting engineers have been playing them. A very BAD experience. On my questioning on authenticating before making such payments to such games i was not given any answer. They say you may have accidentally cliecked on them.
Guys. My bad exp. In aloss. After paying taxes and not getting any services from the government i am now even facing these private service providers and getting the same crap.
Rajesh December 5, 2012 at 6:54 pm
Airtel will always rocks considering its service,support & price.
Mahesh December 1, 2012 at 1:26 pm
I bought a Airtel 4g Lte connection 5 months ago. From day 1, the signal strength is poor and I have lodged 4 complaints till now. Every time they will send an engineer to take readings and every time the technician will admit that there is a signal problem. They say that will optimise settings on the nearest tower but it has not helped. They then call up and say that they will install a new tower and this has been going on for 5 months now. They then close the complaint saying that the problem has been resolved in spite of me telling them explicitly to keep the complaint open.
This is totally against the 4G experience and speed Airtel has promised. This is a warning to all the new subscribers out there. Don’t subscribe to this service.
manju October 1, 2012 at 2:56 pm
DEAR FRIENDS DON’T GET AIR-TEL 4G BROADBAND COLLATION E WAS 420 AIR TEL PLS DONT BRING
Nandini September 25, 2012 at 10:03 am
Don’t buy the Airtel 4GLTE wireless modem. We got it in early Sep 2012. We are in the BTM area of Bangalore, apparently located quite close to one of their towers. None the less, it has not been a good experience. At the demo (which by the way was done by an incompetent salesperson who had to be helped) the speed looked good so we got it. The problem is that the connection is simply not reliable. We completely lose the internet for hours at a stretch. Not nice when you are in the middle of demo to someone overseas. Of course, calling Airtel’s technical support means being passed from one person to the other and repeating your telephone number over and over again! Not pleasant. They did send two technical people over who looked like they knew their job well. Unfortunately, the technology is probably premature and there is little they can do about the fact that their network is not stable. Do not waste your money on this product. Check if the 4G Dongle is better – apparently it can fall back on the 3G network if the 4G network fails.
V K Reddy September 23, 2012 at 3:19 pm
I am one of the first few users of Airtel 4G services, from May 2012. The service is highly unstable and give speeds from less than 1Mb and 17mb. I am just unhappy and waiting for a better service provider, so I can dump this connection. Complained enough to Airtel and visits by their engineers etc., but the situation is same. Hope the things will get better for all 4G users on Airtel some day in future.
Sunil July 25, 2012 at 8:32 pm
I have both BSNL ftth and Airtel 4glte.
Airtel is way better in download & upload speed, excellent service…but frequent disruption.
Bsnl service very pathetic (that prompted me to go for airtel)… goes down for days atleast once a month, no one anwerable for it, no support & service, absolutely frustating…but definitely scores on that it has no disruptions at all.
So would suggest take bsnl ffth unlimited connection with airtel or reliance dongle for backup (must for 2-4 days a month, sure down time for BSNL)
shyam June 1, 2012 at 7:05 pm
hi im shyam from kolkata these airtel people cheated my aunt they showed her the demo it was giving 1-15 mbps average then and now its just giving 3 mbps! and that salesman told her even 4-5 mbps is enough for you to work well then why the hell should we purchase their sick stick of 8 k for 5 mbps speed my mts gives me half that much and i got the stick for free airtel is simply looting people as usual
santosh May 8, 2012 at 12:04 am
@ankush
May be. you have to get one in the first place. i am waiting for four months. everytime i visit bsnl exchange, JTO has some lame excuse.
sushant gupta May 1, 2012 at 3:35 pm
connection speed totally depends upon ur media connectivity and no. of users,i tested
bsnl wimax connection arround 11 kms from tower and got 1.5mbps download speed but reason being it was testing condition and no other subscriber was using it and media connectivity supported 6mbps bandwidth,so how airtel 4G responds over a period of time under real conditions where no. of people use it would give the clear picture
sayan May 1, 2012 at 1:04 pm
ankush :
+1
it rocks
rocks
sudeep May 1, 2012 at 10:52 am
BANGLE UP AIRTEL.
ankush May 1, 2012 at 9:18 am
+1
Kanaga Deepan N May 1, 2012 at 1:05 am
Or Simply, to download HUGE, DO NOT go for Airtel… Even with WiMax (inferior than LTE) and that too at 2.6GHz band (inferior than AirHELL’s 2.3GHz band) BSNL is providing Truely UnLimited plans….
Rohan Singh April 30, 2012 at 10:20 pm
Me too using K4505. And getting amazing speed than Airtel 4G.
Rohan Singh April 30, 2012 at 10:13 pm
Idea and Vodafone
Sudhakar April 30, 2012 at 10:01 pm
To all :
Ya ya. airtel rocks (in terms of sucking users’ money illegally). LOL LOL LOL.
Saurabh April 30, 2012 at 8:22 pm
I’m getting 18-19Mbps with my 28.8Mbps Huawei K4505 modem on Idea 3G. Till March 28, speed was capped to 7.2Mbps and modem used to show HSPA network. But from March 29, we are getting HSPA+ network and speed is always over 16Mbps and touches 20Mbps many times. When I used Airtel 3G, which is using Idea’s network in Haryana via ICRA, the speed is always 6.4-7.2Mbps as they don’t provide speed over 7.2Mbps in their 3G packs. Idea is best in 3G with high speed and low latency of 84-100ms.
sayan April 30, 2012 at 6:18 pm
totally agree wid u.. Which 3G are u using?
Gurpreet April 30, 2012 at 5:54 pm
no one can compete with BSNL in Broadband…
Anil April 30, 2012 at 5:45 pm
“On IDM speed is good enough – 1.91Mbit/s was the peak download speed.”
You mean to say 1.91Mbyte/s?
Rohan Singh April 30, 2012 at 4:19 pm
I have got 18Mbps on 3G and Airtel is giving 15Mbps…Airtel is most slowest of all either its 2G or 3G or 4G. When customers will increase on 4G what they will get 2Mbps..? Airtel always sucks
Pratik April 30, 2012 at 3:17 pm
also whats the point in testing in airtel office.
you should test it on field/
I hope next time we see field tests.
sayan April 30, 2012 at 2:47 pm
if speed gets dropped, then it will be better to use vodafone 3G . Tariffs are not so high as 4G. Speed is also around 8mbit/s..
Bossman April 30, 2012 at 12:09 pm
not much point testing now….wait for some time…more people will join, network will get more congested, infrastructure wont keep up and speed will drop.
Arun April 30, 2012 at 11:47 am
thanks RDB.Was waiting for a review since the launch.Even 4G can’t substitute a fixed line.It would have been good if these t.operators manage to have a bit of focus on optical fiber.
Prashanth April 30, 2012 at 11:45 am
Airtel got to be crazy 15Mbit/s+ on 4g and ping latency around 100 ms.
got to be really crazy i have rcom dongle of 256kb and response to google dns servers (8.8.8.8) is around 90ms
Reply from 8.8.8.8 : bytes=32 time=94ms
sayan April 30, 2012 at 11:29 am
RDB sir, sob 3G operator er 3G speed, tariff comparision niye ekta article toiri krun plzzz.. It will help the readers to go for the ri8 3G plan.. Plzzz sir..
sayan April 30, 2012 at 11:24 am
yes, i agree wid u in this point..
velu April 30, 2012 at 10:57 am
It is 2mbps on vodafone
2mBps on airtel 4g
8times faster than vodafone
Raghu April 30, 2012 at 10:52 am
@R R Kumar
yes all are waiting for Reliance 4g only to give competitive plans to customers.
AP April 30, 2012 at 10:36 am
100 mbps is the potential max speed in some very specific lab conditions. It is not real world speed. 40 mbps is achievable. But then, Airtel will have to ensure high bandwidth backhaul to its towers. I wonder if it has that currently.
And remember that all this is shared speed. As more and more users crowd into the system, speeds will begin dropping.
Latency of 100 ms seemed to be a bit high to me. Is Airtel doing something wrong there? LTE has the potential to achieve less than half this latency in field conditions.
RDB April 30, 2012 at 10:28 am
+1
@sayan 4G is better than 3G becoz of capacity. Vodafone 3G is used by fewer people – no hack like on Airtel/BSNL/Reliance/Tata Docomo 3G. So when Vodafone 3G will have a reasonable amount of traffic, speed will be around 2Mbit/s or less!
sayan April 30, 2012 at 9:41 am
airtel 3G is the slowest among all.. Even airtel 4G is going to be the slowest.. Vodafone 3G gives almost the same speed of airtel 4G . So, my question is, why people would buy 4G dongle at 8k & use the super costly plans?
sayan April 30, 2012 at 9:14 am
typing mistake, same on airtel 4g?? !!
jitender kumar April 30, 2012 at 8:20 am
AirHell 4G should improve because its in pre-mature stage.
Data speeds of LTE
LTE
Peak download 100 Mbit/s
Peak upload 50 Mbit/s
(reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G)
R R Kumar April 30, 2012 at 7:14 am
let reliance 4G come…..
Sandeep April 30, 2012 at 2:41 am
When it comes service of broadband Airtel rocks. But when it comes to broadband tariff plans its the opposite.
kaka April 30, 2012 at 12:46 am
Airtel will and will always rocks considering its service
epynic April 30, 2012 at 12:27 am
i gues it must be FASTER .. 41mbps
Tanmoy Paul April 30, 2012 at 12:26 am
Tanmoy Paul April 30, 2012 at 12:25 am
No wors to say..Airtel rocks…:)