Vodafone 4G services in four more cities

Vodafone India, the second largest mobile network operator in the country by subscriber base has revealed plans to expand its 4G rollout to four more telecoms circles and also fixed a target of having 4G services available in 1,000 towns this year.

The company has already rolled out 4G in five circles so far — Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Karnataka, and Kerala. It will shortly launch 4G in Gujarat, Haryana, UP-East and West Bengal. The company will also expand its fast mobile broadband services coverage to nine markets, thatcover 70 percent of the company's data revenue, Chief Executive Sunil Sood said on Wednesday.

Vodafone has named the services as "SuperNet 4G", which will be a combination of high-speed broadband access and content.

“Our 4G services will be available across 1000 towns this year. We have completed the launch of the first phase and we will be launching our second phase very shortly. In our second phase, we plan to cover four circles of Gujarat, Haryana, UP (East) and West Bengal,” said Sunil Sood, managing director and chief executive officer of Vodafone India

He further added, “Since last year, we have been working on a war footing on providing 4G services. We have separate teams working to provide a fantastic experience that includes getting sites, getting fiber and solving whatever issues there are."

The company has invested Rs.1,000 crore in Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR) to upgrade its network, also added 3,185 sites last year in the region, including in many of government buildings in the capital. In Mumbai, it has also made an investment of Rs.1, 261 crore to enhance its network and added around 5000 sites last year, particularly for its 4G services.

Sood said the company also has plans to acquire spectrum in the near future, “We are yet to sort out whether we will acquire through trading route, sharing route or auction route but we do have plans to increase our spectrum in order to enhance our portfolio.”

According to Vodafone, India, the SuperNet deployment has established several new records in terms of size and pace of deployment. These include the largest deployment of the self-optimizing network (SON) technology and the deployment of HD voice and single RAN technology across the entire network.