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Andrew Bonwick
Vice President of Product Development at Relm Insurance
Madhav Sheth
CEO of Ai+ Smartphone
Stephen Rose
CEO Render Networks
Bharti Airtel has now officially announced the shutdown of 3G network in Maharashtra and Goa telecom circle. This closure of 3G services is part of Airtel’s plan to phase out 3G technology and only offer high-speed 4G and 2G services to the customers. Airtel mobile broadband services shall be now available on high-speed 4G network, said the telco in a press statement. Do make a note that the Airtel has only announced the shutdown of 3G network in Maharashtra & Goa circle, excluding Mumbai. For the unaware, Mumbai is a separate telecom circle which is part of the 22 telecom circles in the country.
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Airtel Will Continue to Provide 2G Services in Maharashtra & Goa
While Bharti Airtel has phased out the 3G network in the circle, it confirmed the availability of 2G services to the customers. Airtel will continue to provide 2G services in Maharashtra (excluding Mumbai) and Goa to serve the connectivity needs of customers on feature phones, added the telco. Unlike Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel is a GSM operator and it’s continually working towards becoming an LTE-only operator. The entire customer base of Reliance Jio uses the 4G network, but that’s not the case with Bharti Airtel as the telco has just 40% of 4G network users. And the rest is 2G and 3G. Thankfully, the closure of the 3G network in multiple circles means the users are getting migrating to 4G network.
As for the technical details, Airtel has re-farmed 2100Mhz band, that was being used for 3G to further strengthen its 4G network. The company has now deployed L2100 technology to complement its existing 4G services. The re-farming of existing 3G spectrum for 4G will further boost the network capacity and wider the network availability.
