Telecom major Bharti Airtel Ltd on Monday launched 4G trials for its existing customers in Hyderabad and Vishakapatnam and announced a complimentary upgrade for them to 4G at 3G prices.
Customers would experience immense benefits with the launch -- faster speeds, greater quality and superior value, said Venkatesh Vijayraghavan, CEO-Andhra Pradesh and Telangana of Bharti Airtel (India).
The 4G service, which Airtel launched first in Kolkata in April 2012, will provide superfast internet speeds and the customers can enjoy various capabilities, including high definition video streaming with zero buffering and downloading 10 movies in less than 30 minutes. Chennai, Bengaluru, Pune, Chandigarh and Amritsar are cities where Airtel has rolled out 4G services.
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“Over the last few months, we have made significant investments in building a robust 4G network. We want our existing customers in the two cities to be the first ones to enjoy the Airtel 4G experience offering them free upgrade at the same price as 3G,” Mr.Vijayraghavan said.
Existing Airtel customers with 4G ready mobile devices can get a 4G SIM at any of the company’s retail touchpoints across the two cities. To accelerate the adoption of 4G services, Airtel has also joined hands with Samsung and Flipkart.
Both Airtel and Samsung, the release said, will promote the 4G services and 4G smartphones at respective customer touchpoints. Samsung’s retail stores will facilitate easy Airtel 4G SIM swap for customers buying 4G smartphones. Further, Samsung, in the weeks ahead, will also offer Airtel 4G SIMs along with all Samsung 4G handsets available in the Indian market.
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As part of the partnership, Flipkart will offer Airtel 4G with double the data benefits for customers buying select 4G handsets, including to non-Airtel customers.
The trial phase will be an opportunity to gather “valuable customer feedback around the quality of the 4G services”. The inputs would help in achieving the company’s goal of building a world-class 4G network infrastructure.