Vodafone to soon extend 4G service to Gujarat, Haryana, UP East and West Bengal circles

Follow Us

Vodafone the 2nd largest operator in India by subscriber base and the largest 4G operator worldwide has today announced the intent to launch 4G services to 4 new circles under phase 2. The operator currently has services in 5 circles of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Kerala, Karnataka and will now extend the list with Gujarat, Haryana, UP East and West Bengal circles, taking the list up to 9 circles.

IMG_20160511_152055




The 9 circles comprise approximately 70% of Vodafone's data revenue. The operator already has 1 crore plus data subscribers in Delhi NCR alone. With this expansion the operator aims at extending its 4G footprint across 1000 towns by the end of this year. The operator is setting up new cell sites at the rate of 5 sites per hour in Q4 and laying approximately 40 KMs of fiber a day. The old cell sites are being replaced with single RAN sites which can support 3G, 4G and 5G with simple software upgrade and in metro circles like Delhi and Mumbai it has deployed self optimising network (SON) technology.

Sunil Sood the CEO and MD of Vodafone India informed that the 4G services in the phase 2 circles will also be launched using its existing 1800 MHz spectrum that the operator holds, though he refrained from commenting whether the company is planning on deploying narrow band LTE in some of the circles where it holds less than 5MHz of liberalised spectrum. Narrow band LTE needs blocks of 1.4 or 3 MHz paired or unpaired spectrum and can deliver slower speeds in comparison to traditional LTE using a minimum block size of 5MHz.

With the ongoing harmonisation of spectrum in 1800MHz band before the July auctions, all the fragmented spectrum holding of all operators in that band is being made contiguous so as to enable the operators to launch high speed data services using a continuous chunk of spectrum. This has worked in favour of Vodafone  and made it capable of launching 4G in more circles. Vodafone holds 7.7 MHz liberalised spectrum in Gujarat, 4.9 MHz liberalised in Haryana, 6.45 MHz liberalised in UP East and 2.5 MHz liberalised and 1.8 MHz unliberalised spectrum in West Bengal (Which the operator might have submitted an application to get liberalised).

The war of 4G supremacy is heating up with every passing day as the incumbents battle it out amongst themselves under the looming threat of the commercial launch of services by Reliance Jio. Only time will tell who emerges as the true winner and who escapes with the battle scars.

Reported By

Content writer

Esmail is our very own in-house spectrum specialist. He is passionate about Telecom, DTH and OTT video streaming apps. When not writing an article, you can find him binge watching shows on Netflix while sipping on a cup of coffee.

Recent Comments

shivraj roy :

i feel Vi has improved than what it was in 2022 i usually get around 8-10mbps in very heavily dense…

5G Users Consuming 3.6 Times More Data than 4G Users…

biswadeepmondal :

JioAir Fiber is working very well in KPA & HLR. Sadly they don't have any data only plan.

REP: Airtel Expands Network Footprint in Bankura District of West…

Anonymous :

In line with Airtel's ?49 plan that offers 20GB of data for the same duration.

Jio Brings New Rs 49 Plan

SCKPA :

Airtel is claiming so many things. But at our location there have so many places where airtel 2g signal is…

REP: Airtel Expands Network Footprint in Bankura District of West…

Faraz :

Yes.. Corruption and arrogance is in the core of this organisation since beginning.. & Now even gov wants everything to…

BSNL's Operating Profits Signal a Positve Future

Load More
Subscribe
Notify of
39 Comments
newest
oldest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments