Vodafone rolls out 4G in State, starting with Mysuru

Private telecom service provider Vodafone announced the rollout of its 4G network in Karnataka with a launch in the City of Palaces, Mysuru, on Friday.

Suresh Kumar, Vodafone India’s Operations Director – South, told reporters after the launch that they would soon expand their 4G coverage across the State in a phased manner to cover important business and tourism centres including Bengaluru, Mangaluru and Hubbali.

Testing of 4G services had already commenced in Bengaluru and other important metros, he said, adding that the service will be available in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata before March 2016.

Vodafone rolled out its 4G services in India with a launch in Trivandrum in Kerala in December 2015.

Responding to a question, Mr. Kumar said they decided to begin their 4G rollout in Karnataka with Mysuru as the city had a good subscriber base and healthy growth rate in data consumption. Mysuru is the third city in India after two in Kerala to have Vodafone’s 4G services.

Vodafone has a total of 7.7 million subscribers in Karnataka. “Karnataka is a significant growth market for us with data contributing to 20 per cent of the total revenues, and growing at a rate of 50 per cent annually.”

Built on the 1800 MHz band, Mr. Kumar said the 4G network will enable its customers to access Internet across a range of smart devices.

After launching 4G services in Mysuru, where Airtel and Idea are already offering the same, Vodafone has offered its customers free upgrade to 4G along with a high-speed SIM. The company is offering 100 per cent extra data for recharges of 1 GB and above (4G), for prepaid and post paid customers for one month, and 100 per cent extra data for all 4G RED customers for three months.

As part of the launch, The service provider is also offering free download of music and movies for three months from its digital media partner Hungama.