Weeks after revising its Rs 399 and Rs 448 prepaid plans, Airtel has now started rolling out its 4G services in Hayuliang region of Arunachal Pradesh. Hayuliang is an area that comes under the Anjaw district which is home to around 100 villages, all of which will now be connected with high-speed internet starting today.
The latest development comes as part of Airtel’s Project Leap initiative and marks the beginning of Airtel’s expansion to remote areas of the country. Airtel plans to release 4G connectivity to other parts of the Anjaw as it looks to gain more traction in upgrading its 4G capacity in the North East. The company faces a challenge in doing so as installing towers on steep terrain has been a tough job to keep up with.
Currently, Airtel is the largest telecom provider in Arunachal Pradesh with more than 5 lakh subscribers in the region across 900 villages and 30 towns. The company is planning to install 6,000 mobile sites across the North East this year to increase its network capacity in remote areas as well as rural regions. The move comes after the government started suggesting telecom operators increase their network connectivity in and around North East India.
All operators including Airtel are also facing heat from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) imposed a penalty of 56 lakhs on Indian telecom operators for not meeting call drop benchmark in the first half of 2018.
Coming back to Airtel, the operator recently released free Amazon Prime subscriptions to users of its Rs 799 broadband plan. Among mobile plans, Airtel recently announced the Rs 169 prepaid plan with a validity of 28 days offering unlimited national voice calls, 1GB of 4G/3G/2G data per day and 100 SMS per day.