Airtel India adds 235 cities to 5G network, service available in 500

Airtel on Friday announced a big addition of 235 cities to its 5G network, spreading the reach of its fifth generation service to 500 cities and trumping its rival Reliance Jio which has its 5G service live in 406 cities. Earlier this week, Airtel had said that its 5G Plus service was available in over 265 cities.

“We have already covered 500 cities and are adding 30 to 40 cities every single day. By September of 2023, we expect to expand our 5G footprint to all of urban India,” Randeep Sekhon, CTO, Bharti Airtel, said in a statement.

Users will now be able to experience ultrafast, reliable and secure 5G Plus service without having to worry about data exhaustion as the company removes the capping on data usage across all existing plans, it said.

The company promises to deliver 20 to 30 times higher speed than today, coupled with better voice experience and super-fast call connect. It also stresses the Airtel 5G Plus network is also kinder on the environment because of its special power reduction solution.

For easy transition from 4G to 5G, Airtel has tuned all the current Airtel 4G SIMS to be 5G compatible. This means users do not have to buy a separate SIM to access high-speed data.

The mode of user expansion is also different for both telecom operators.

Jio usually sends out invites to users on the My Jio app. The company has also launched a special 5G welcome offer for all its users giving unlimited data at up to 1Gbps speeds, at no additional fee.

New postpaid plan

The telco also announced a new postpaid plan at Rs 799, which will offer users two connections. Users will get 1 regular SIM and one free add-on SIM as part of the plan.  

The subscribers will also get 105GB of data and unlimited local and STD calls under the plan. The users will also get a DTH connection with TV channels worth Rs 260 and free access to Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ Hotstar and some other OTT apps.

This follows the new Rs 599 family postpaid plan with one add-on connection announced by Airtel earlier this week. Till now, Airtel customers used to have an entry-level option of a Rs 999 postpaid plan with two add-on connections.

The churn in the postpaid segment began after market leader Jio recently made a push to attract a larger base of postpaid users through its new set of family plans.

From March 23, Jio’s family plans allow a family of four to try the services free of cost for a month. The additional three add-on connections will be available at Rs 99 per SIM, taking the total monthly charge for four postpaid connections to Rs 696 for a family of four.