Bharti Airtel will issue fresh equipment orders for 4G to multiple vendors including Samsung, Nokia, and Ericsson. The order will be for acquiring the equipment over three years. The order value is estimated to be worth about $1 billion. As per an ET report, the fresh equipment contracts are geared to push feature phone users to upgrade to smartphones and start consuming 4G services. Bharti Airtel has been pushing its 4G coverage to rural India rapidly over the last year. So the company's upcoming equipment order coupled with the 4G expansion in rural India underscores the importance of 4G in the market.
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While 5G NSA (non-standalone) has already been deployed by Bharti Airtel, it is more like a complimentary service to 4G. The same is true with Jio. Customers are offered 5G at no additional cost if they are spending money for 2GB daily data plans. At the same time, Bharti Airtel is also in talks with global vendors to place orders for 5G equipment. However, the priority is still 4G.
Ericsson said in its Mobility Report released in June 2024 that India's 4G subscriptions will start declining from 740 million in 2023 and reach 410 million by 2029.
One interesting thing to note here is the entry of Samsung in Airtel's network equipment portfolio. Samsung has been working with Airtel for some time now on 5G deployment. However, for 4G, it was either the Chinese companies or majorly Ericsson and Nokia that Airtel partnered with. Samsung is also partnering with Vodafone Idea (Vi) for network equipment supply and has been a key partner for Jio with its 4G journey in the intial days.
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Samsung wants to eat up the market share of Ericsson and Nokia. This competition will be good for the Indian telecom landscape. In this $1 billion contract, Samsung would supply 5% of the equipment while Ericsson and Nokia will meet 50% and 45% of the order.
