Airtel completes installation of 1.8 lakh sites in 2 years

Airtel added over 14,500 km of fibre in its national network during the past two years

Telecom major Bharti Airtel has doubled its network size by installing 1.8 lakh mobile sites in the past two years.

"In the last two years (fiscal year 2016 and 2017), Airtel has deployed 180,000 mobile sites across India. This is same as the number of mobile sites deployed by the company in the first 20 years of operations, making it one the largest mobile network rollouts globally," the company said in a statement.

The deployment is part of Airtel's 'Project Leap' under which the company committed to invest Rs 60,000 crore over a period of three years beginning November 2015.

"Airtel has also doubled its overall transmission capacity and increased the mobile backhaul capacity by eight times to roll out high speed broadband network with 4G and 3G coverage in all 22 telecom circles," the statement said.

The company added over 14,500 km of fibre in its national network during the past two years, it said.

"This deployment will leverage our spectrum capacity and is yet another benchmark by Airtel in execution excellence. We are now in a position to ramp up future capacity on this network very quickly, giving us unmatched reach and agility," Bharti Airtel Director -- Networks, Abhay Savargaonkar said.

The company did not disclose the number of mobile sites it plans to add in the third year of Project Leap.