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Bharti Airtel will launch its 5G services next month and provide urban-India coverage by end-2023, its top executive told customers in an email on Wednesday, amping up the competition with No 1 carrier which has targeted next year-end for national coverage of its own set of 5G services.
"Within a few weeks, we will commence the launch of our next generation technology, Airtel 5G," said Gopal Vittal, chief executive officer of Bharti Airtel in the email seen by Mint. “We expect to launch our 5G services within a month. By December, we should have coverage in the key metros. After that we will expand rapidly to cover the entire country. We expect to cover all of urban India by the end of 2023," he said.
Vittal had told analysts last month that Airtel will cover 5,000 towns and cities with 5G by March 2024.
The No 2 carrier said it will offer differential services for customers seeking superior or consistent experience, through network slicing, while offering speeds upto 30 times more than present day 4G speed levels.
“Airtel 5G will also enable differential quality for special requirements, something called network slicing. So, if you are a gamer, and want a flawless experience, we will be able to slice the network for you," Vittal told customers.
Vittal added that customers will be able to know of the availability of 5G in their areas and compatibility of their existing smartphones with 5G, by checking on the Airtel Thanks App which will be available next month with the 5G launch.
He also asked customers upgrading to new phones to check for 5G compatibility before purchasing, noting that most smartphones that were more than a year old did not have a 5G chipset. He added that Airtel SIMs were already 5G enabled, therefore to enable 5G on their phones, customers would have the choice to pick 5G in addition to 4G LTE.
While the top executive did not mention tariff plans for 5G, people in the know said that 5G plans were expected to be finalised soon.
Vittal had said last month that Airtel was yet to decide on pricing of 5G tariff plans adding that globally 5G had not led to incremental ARPU growth. He had reiterated that tariffs of existing plans needed to rise.
Bharti Enterprises vice-chairman Akhil Gupta told Mint last month that Airtel may not charge a premium for its 5G service but may offer it to users of high-priced tariff plans. “My feeling is that with 5G, penetration will increase so quickly that it will be like any other offering. Anybody who has a 5G handset will get 5G. They will consume more and automatically go to a higher tariff plan. This would result in higher revenues," Gupta had said. “I really don’t think there is going to be something like a pure premium 5G. At best we could start giving 5G on slightly higher plans, but let the operating people decide what they want to do," he added.