Telecom operator Idea Cellular today announced the expansion of its high-speed 4G LTE services to 39 towns in Karnataka.
The company said within a month it has expanded 4G LTE service footprint to 24 districts, including Bengaluru, Mysuru, Madikeri, Karwar, Chikmagalur, Belgavi and Chitradurga, covering 20 per cent of the state's population.
With rapid expansion, Idea will launch 4G service in Mangaluru, Udupi-Manipal, Vijayapura, Ballari and 18 more towns by end of the fiscal, taking the total tally to 61.
Idea has over 8.6 million consumers in Karnataka, the company said in a release here.
In December, Idea had announced the launch of 4G LTE services in all four telecom circles (five states) of South India -- Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and Karnataka.
Earlier this month, it launched services across three more circles - Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana and Punjab -- expanding its 4G LTE service footprint to seven telecom service areas.
Ambrish Jain, Deputy Managing Director Idea Cellular said since last week of December, Idea has rapidly rolled out high- speed 4G LTE network to cover seven major markets in the country.
By March, the services will extend to three more key markets -- Maharashtra and Goa, Northeast and Odisha and by June, Idea's 4G footprint will cover 750 cities across 10 telecom circles, he said.
Idea reported had 44 million data customers as of March
31, 2016. Of these over 680,000 customers were using 4G services and 22.9 million 3G data customers.
Idea in a statement said that primary reasons that impacted mobile industry growth in financial year 2016 were reduction of interconnection charges by telecom regulator TRAI, reduction in upper cap for national roaming and SMS charges, slower uptake for mobile broadband services against supply of 3G and 4G launches across country.
In 2015-16, Idea said that it has more than doubled its past three years average capital expenditure spends with network investment of Rs 7,770 crore.
During the reported fiscal, the company integrated highest ever 48,878 mobile sites (14,466 sites for 2G Sites, 19,769 for 3G sites and 14,643 for 4G) reaching a total of 191,536 sites. It also expanded its optical fibre coverage by doubling its annual roll out to 22,100 kilometre compared to 11,400 km in FY'15) reaching to 115,500 km.
