Today we got a scoop from one of our reader, Amit Shah who sent us a snap showing Airtel 4G signal. He is located at Kandivali, sub-urban of Mumbai west and the signals are live on Mumbai-Maharastra circle border.
He also cited that the signals are available during early morning hours but he did not able to latch to it as the signal is very poor and remains for a very short time period.
Our Conclusion:
Well at the very first when we got the snap with ‘4G’ we were all excited and felt great! But our joy did not last for a long time. We asked the handset model – it is myTouch 4G which is made by HTC and sold with T-Mobile connection.
We checked the specs details of the handset over official site of HTC and we find that this handset does not have support for LTE, but supports ‘4G’ in T-Mobile’s term i.e. the handset has support from HSPA+ upto 14.4 Mbps while T-Mobile USA’s HSPA+ 4Gnetwork can support upto 42Mbps.
Another important thing is India's 4G spectrum for Mobile Services or Voice services are yet to auction so many people are getting confused with voice 4G for which the auction is yet to happen with 4G BWA which has already happened!
As Airtel and other 3G players show their advertisements with 21Mbps or faster 3G network it is not unexpected that somewhere Airtel really deployed 14.4Mbps HSPA+ network. Amit who shared this to us, might be confused because of the handset name he is using (myTouch 4G) and presence of ‘4G’ logo on his handset.
Our Advice :
We would like to advice our readers that this is not the right time to import 4G handsets or other devices, because it may not work .We are not sure that LTE operators will come up with SIM based Handset or settings will be inside the handset and there might be difference of LTE technology ( FDD and TDD ) and operational frequency bands.
We believe Airtel other 4G operators may roll out 4G/LTE-TD services in next 6 months. At the primary stage 4G/LTE services will be for wireless broadband and later voice over LTE will be offered as technology advances!
