Reliance Jio has already started making impact on Indian Telecom market and especially the 4G data market in terms of speed and also tariff. Though it has not yet launched its commercial operations, incumbent players in the market have already started experiencing its heat. In order to grab maximum 4G data market, Telecom companies are now into speed war with each other, after tariff.
India’s top telecom operator Bharti Airtel has deployed technology known as”carrier aggregation” in Mumbai and Kerala to combine different bands of spectrum and create larger blocks of airwaves to offer faster and more stable 4G data services for mobile users. This technology helps telecom companies provide as much as 135 mbps download speed for their customers.
Carrier Aggregation (LTE-A) is a technology which combines spectrum bands to ensure much faster speeds than existing 4G networks. Airtel’s current deployment in Mumbai and Kerala involves combining the 1800Mhz and 2300Mhz bands. Reliance Jio is also testing carrier aggregation combining the 850Mhz and 2300Mhz bands.
Currently, Reliance Jio offers peak download speed of 80-90 mbps on its bandwidth of (20 mHz) on 2300 Mhz band due to few Subscribers on its network. This speed could fall gradually when no of subscribers increases and the network experiences heavy load, congestion etc.
For the moment, the speed war is between Airtel and Jio. Vodafone and Idea don’t have multiple 4G bands across India and hence the question of deploying such technology does not arise.Vodafone has been considering deployment of this technology and has conducted a trial with equipment vendor partners.
Assuming that Telecom companies will buy spectrum in the upcoming auction, they are keeping their network ready with features and functionalities that can take care of carrier aggregation. Vodafone and Idea will look for grabbing as much as spectrum as they can in the upcoming auctions.
Source: ET
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