The telecom company is the only player to launch 4G services in the country and its performance is being keenly watched by other players.
“The early response has been extremely positive and the speed has been good. User experience has been our focus and this is very positive,” said Mr K. Srinivas, President - Consumer Business, Bharti Airtel.
Airtel had first launched its services in Kolkata in April but it remained restricted primarily to enterprise users and self-employed professionals because of the high costs.
In Kolkata, the 4G dongles are sold by Airtel at Rs 4,800 while post-paid data plans start at Rs 833. Pre-paid plans begin at Rs 995. Users can download up to 6GB of data after which the speeds falls to 128 Kbps (kilo bits per second).
According to Airtel dealers in the city, the average download speeds are nearly at 23 Mbps (mega bytes per second) - three to four times faster than the 3G speeds of 5-7 Mbps. While the company refused to share subscriber numbers, an executive at one of the Airtel outlets in Kolkata said that nearly 175 connections (around one connection everyday) have been sold in the last three months from their store.
