Vodafone recently commenced 4G service in parts of Kerala and Karnataka circles except Bangalore, just ahead of new entrant Reliance Jio's planned launch in March, but about five months after rival Airtel launched its services across the country.
Vodafone India is set to launch its 4G services in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru within a month's time following its launch in Kolkata on Monday, Naveen Chopra, chief operating officer, said.
Vodafone recently commenced 4G service in parts of Kerala and Karnataka circles except Bangalore, just ahead of new entrant Reliance Jio's planned launch in March, but about five months after rival Airtel launched its services across the country.
"Testing of 4G services in these locations has already commenced successfully and Vodafone has partnered with leading global technology service providers for the network rollout. We have already started roll out of 4G-ready SIMs in these markets inviting customers for a free upgrade before the commercial launch," Vodafone officials said.
"These five circles taken together account for 50% of our data revenues and hence we prioritised these for our 4G service launch," Chopra said. The service in Kolkata is being launched in data packs ranging from 150MB for Rs 42 to up to 25GB for Rs 2,049.
The offer comes with international roaming on 4G to its customers visiting the UK, Germany, Romania, Spain and the Netherlands.
"We are witnessing data traffic growth by about 75% on-year and about 21% of our end-use revenues is coming from data. In coming days we see major collaboration between voice and data. Every year about 10 million data customers are coming onboard and 75% of these people are using 3G services," Chopra said.
Vodafone selected Kolkata as the first metro for 4G sevice where data contributes around 25% of total revenues growing at 45% annually, Anand Sahai, business head–Kolkata, said.
The service in the city, however, won't be available everywhere but in select residential and business areas and would expand across Kolkata in time, the official said.
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