Bharti Airtel previously said it was on track to cover the entire country with 5G technology by March 2024

Indian carrier Bharti Airtel said it has already reached a total of 3 million 5G customers in Mumbai, according to local press reports.

The operator noted it had successfully deployed 5G service across all locations in Mumbai, adding that it has registered a significant increase in 5G users in the past six months in Mumbai.

Mumbai is the most populous of India with an estimated population of 12.6 million.

Aditya Kankaria, CEO of Bharti Airtel in Mumbai, said: “We are making significant strides in building the network infrastructure required to facilitate widespread adoption of 5G in Mumbai. We express our gratitude to our valued customers who have upgraded to enjoy the power of unlimited 5G service at no additional cost. Our tireless efforts are to keep our customers consistently connected to the city’s fastest, most reliable, and cutting-edge network.”

Bharti Airtel also announced that it had reached 3.5 million customers in the 5G in Bengal state. Currently, the company’s 5G service covers all districts of the state, according to an Airtel spokesperson.

Bharti Airtel previously said it was on track to cover the entire country with 5G technology by March of this year.

Airtel is currently using equipment from Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung to provide 5G services. The Indian operator had secured a total of 19,800 megahertz of spectrum in the 900 MHz, 1.8 GHz, 2.1 GHz, 3.3 GHz and 26 GHz bands in a previous auction carried out by the Indian government.

In August 2023, Bharti Airtel announced that its 5G FWA offering, dubbed Airtel Xstream AirFiber, was available for its customers in Delhi and Mumbai. The operator said that the new service, which will offer internet to consumers in fiber dark areas, will address the last-mile connectivity issue in both rural and urban India where access to fiber infrastructure is a challenge.

Bharti Airtel recently said it aims to launch fixed wireless access (FWA) services for factories using 5G Standalone architecture (SA).

The telco’s managing director Gopal Vittal also said that trials for 5G SA were carried out in a city in the northern region of the country with 30 sites. Currently, rival operator Reliance Jio Infocomm is the only carrier in India to offer 5G services on SA architecture using the 700 MHz band.