Daily News and Analysis are reporting today that Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries are scheduled to conduct their 4G trials based on the LTE technology in April at its Jamnagar complex. We already remember last month when Reliance announced that it would start trials for a 4G network with the hub being Nagpur, we’ve even heard talks of Airtel is planning to conduct its own trials on 4G LTE network in Kolkata.
Reliance Industries enjoys great 4G ubiquity since its subsidiary Infotel Broadband services has secured spectrum for 4G in all the circles. Airtel has only managed to win the rights for Maharashtra, Kolkata, Karnataka and Punjab, Qualcomm has rights for Delhi, Mumbai, Kerala and Haryana while Aircel has some good markets in its share like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Bihar, Orrisa, Assam, the North East and J&K. Tikona also enjoys decent amount of circles which include Gujarat, UP, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh. Augere Limited, a Mauritius based company has managed to capture Madhya Pradesh as its only 4G circle.
Well seeing at the speed at which Reliance and other companies are trying to roll out the 4G services, we’re happy to believe that it won’t take much time to reach the consumers as it took in the case of 3G and Reliance seems to be having a clear advantage in this and is roping in equipment vendors such as Huawei (which holds 50% of the world’s market share for LTE equipment), ZTE and Alcatel Lucent for network rollout and consumer devices. 3G has somewhat failed to take off here in India, we’ll have to wait and watch as to how warmly people in India embrace the latest high-speed technology.
