Bharti Airtel to offer 4G services in Bangalore

India's leading telecom operator Bharti Airtel, in an announcement on Twitter said, it would offer 4G services (voice call facility) on 4G LTE enabled smartphones in Bangalore by the end of this month and has also separately confirmed this.

''Only for airtel Bangalore mobile customers, enjoy airtel4G on LTE enabled smartphones in 3 weeks. More details to follow soon'', reads Airtel's Twitter account.

Airtel launched 4G services in Chandigarh, Panchkula and Mohali and in 2012, the company acquired 49 per cent interest in Qualcomm AP's India entities that hold BWA licenses in Delhi, Mumbai, Haryana and Kerala (See: Bharti Airtel rating unaffected by its Qualcomm's India stake buy).

4G, the fourth generation of mobile phone mobile communications standards, is a  successor to third generation (3G) standards.

A 4G system provides mobile ultra-broadband internet access, for instance to laptops with USB wireless modems, to smartphones, as also other mobile devices. The footprint of mobile broadband in India would be further enhanced with 4G services.

Bharti Airtel, had in May 2012, selected Chinese Information and Communications Technology (ICT) solutions giant Huawei, to plan, design, supply and deploy its TD LTE (4G) network in Karnataka.

The company, in February this year, announced the successful completion of trials of CSFB technology in the cities of Pune, Kolkata and Bengaluru.

According to commentators the telecom operator had not revealed details of how it would do this- Circuit Switched FallBack or voice-over LTE but more details may become available in the next three weeks.

There have also been reports that Reliance Jio and Aircel had also geared up and would be expected to launch their own 4G services next year as they had already been granted  licences.

Meanwhile, speculation is rife that Airtel would tie-up with some smartphone manufacturer to provide handsets for 4G service usage in the Indian telecom market.

The telecom operator had last year released LTE support enabled Huawei Ascend P1 phone in Kolkata to initiate with 4G services.

However, according to commentators, the future of 4G network development in India, remains uncertain.