Airtel plans to deploy 7000 mobile sites in Mumbai during FY 18-19

As a part of its network transformation initiative - Project Leap, India's largest telecom operator Bharti Airtel today announced massive network deployment plans for Mumbai.

The telco said that during FY 18-19, it plans to roll out 7000 new mobile sites including the 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.

The telco 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.

"As part of our endeavor to build a future-ready network to deliver a 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,"Amit Tripathi, Chief Executive Officer - Mumbai, Bharti Airtel Ltd.

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, delivers super fast data speeds despite a large number of concurrent users at the same location, the telco informed.

Airtel pointed out that the planned roll-out will augment the current network in Mumbai by 30 percent, 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.

The company has also announced that it will continue to make significant investments to further expand its operations and network footprint across Kerala.

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Airtel plans to roll out 5,000 new mobile sites across Kerala in FY 2018-19 to add large network capacity and take high-speed data services deeper into rural areas. This effectively translates to 1 new Airtel mobile site going LIVE every two hours across the state.