It looks like Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel are battling against each other to the core to deliver a good experience to the users during the Indian Premier League 2018, which is set to kickstart tomorrow. Bharti Airtel has now announced that it will deploy the advanced Massive MIMO Pre-5G technology across IPL match venues, making sure that its customers continue to enjoy faster data speeds on Airtel 4G network when they are at the IPL 2018 match venues. Airtel will deploy the advanced Massive MIMO Pre-5G technology across IPL match venues.
Massive MIMO expands existing network capacity by five to seven times over existing spectrum, thereby improving spectral efficiency. Customers will be able to experience faster data speeds on Airtel’s 4G network despite the very large number of concurrent users on the network sites at the venue. For the unaware, the upcoming 5G network technology is also promised to offer excellent data speeds even on a congested network.
Airtel will deploy the Massive MIMO solution in IPL match venues in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mohali, Indore, Jaipur, Bengaluru and Chennai. The first venue to go receive the Airtel’s Massive MIMO deployment will be the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai where the first match of the IPL will be played on April 7, 2018, i.e., tomorrow.
Shyam Mardikar, CTO – Mobile, Bharti Airtel said “As part of our endeavour to offer a seamless high-speed 4G experience to our customers, we are deploying this advanced Pre-5G solution to enable high speed and high capacity in-stadia network experience at IPL match venues. We believe this will enhance the digital experience for our customers and enable them to share, post and stream content seamlessly even in locations with massive crowds.”
To recall, Airtel was the first mobile operator in India to commercially deploy Massive MIMO technology in circles such as Kerala, Andhra Pradesh & Telangana, Karnataka etc. with the promise of data speeds up to 135 Mbps.
Furthermore, Airtel yesterday announced that its users could watch all the IPL 2018 matches Live for free via Hotstar by downloading the latest version of Airtel TV application. Airtel, through its partnership with Hotstar, will be offering free IPL 2018 streaming service to its users, which is yet another move to compete with Reliance Jio.
