After Kerala, Mumbai, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, Airtel has announced massive network expansion in West Bengal as part of its network transformation initiative – Project Leap. During the FY 18-19, Airtel plans to roll out 10,000 new mobile sites taking the total number of sites to 38,000 along with an addition of more than 2000 kilometers of optic fiber, taking the total footprint to 17,000 kms to enable high speed data transmission.
Airtel also plans to deploy pre-5G Massive MIMO technology across major business and residential hubs in the two states to step up high speed data experience for customers.
Massive MIMO expands network capacities by 5-7 times on the same spectrum and delivers super fast data speeds despite a large number of concurrent users at the same location. Back in April, Airtel had deployed Massive MIMO pre-5G solution across IPL match venues offering up to 3x faster 4G speeds.
Commenting on the same, Sameer Anjaria, Chief Executive Officer – West Bengal & Odisha, Bharti Airtel Ltd, said:
As part of our endeavor to build a future ready network to deliver best-in-class experience to our customers, we are stepping up our network investments across West Bengal. Airtel has pioneered the rollout of Massive MIMO in India and we will now undertake wide scale deployments of the cutting-edge technology in key business and residential hubs across Kolkata. This will truly add to the smartphone experience for Airtel customers.