Bharti Airtel this week announced massive network deployment plans for Mumbai as part of its network transformation initiative, Project Leap.
During FY 18-19, Airtel plans to rollout 7000 new mobile sites including large scale deployment of pre-5G Massive MIMO technology across Mumbai to significantly boost network capacity for high speed data and voice services. The roll-out would translate to the addition of one new mobile site to Airtel’s future-ready network in Mumbai every hour throughout the year.
In addition, Airtel also plans to integrate an additional spectrum carrier of 10 MHz in the 2300 MHz band to further strengthen its 4G footprint. While stepping up high speed data capacities and significantly enhancing the network speed and coverage across the city, the deployment will further add to the customer experience in India’s financial capital.
The pre-5G Massive MIMO technology will be deployed across all major business hubs and residential locations in the city. Massive MIMO, which expands network capacities by 5-7 times on the same spectrum, and delivers superfast data speeds despite large number of concurrent users at the same location. Airtel had recently deployed the solution at Wankhede Stadium throughout the IPL.
The planned roll-out will augment the current network in Mumbai by 30%, taking the total number of sites in the city to 27,000. The optic fiber footprint in the city is also set to get a boost with the addition of 400 KMs of fresh fiber, taking the total footprint to 2700 KMs and enabling superior high speed data transmission.
Airtel also said that it is already witnessing a steady surge in its VoLTE traffic in Mumbai on the back of the availability of a seamless 4G network with fallback capability.
Amit Tripathi, CEO, Mumbai, Bharti Airtel
As part of our endeavour to build a future ready network to deliver best-in-class experience to our customers, we are stepping up investments considerably by adding 7000 new sites and 10 MHz of TDD LTE spectrum.
