Airtel and Vi Can Add Millions of Fresh 4G Subscribers This Year

If things go well, it can be a good year for the Indian Telecom industry. While the operators are prepping for rolling out 5G services in the country, there is no way they would ignore their 4G subscribers.

• Make Telecom Talk My Trusted Source
• 
• 

In fact, India stands to be a major 4G market for at least the next two to three years until 5G is deployed in most parts of the nation. Thus, the operators will be focused on adding as many 4G subscribers as possible.

Since a large number of mobile subscribers in India use 2G or 3G SIMs, they will be soon looking to upgrade to 4G services when the telcos shut down older generation networks. This is where both Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel can gain plenty of subscribers.

Airtel and Vi Will Need to Make Efforts to Migrate 2G/3G Customers to 4G

Crisil Research, a ratings agency, believes that Airtel and Vi will need to make more efforts to covert their 2G and 3G customers to 4G. The telcos have been refarming their 3G spectrum for 4G. Thus users will need to shift to 4G networks very soon when the telcos shut down their 3G networks.

Both the operators can benefit a lot if the legacy network users switch to 4G this year. If the telcos can pull all their resources into providing 4G services only, they will reduce their operational costs that 2G and 3G entail. Further, the refarming of spectrum would allow the telcos to increase their 4G capacity meaning they can add more users without worrying about issues such as network congestion.

Currently, there are up to 300 million users in India that are using feature phones and have not upgraded to 4G devices. Since India has a plethora of options when it comes to low-cost or entry-level 4G devices, feature phone users can upgrade to 4G supportive devices very comfortably.