Idea Cellular Launches 4G LTE Services in the North East

Telecom major Idea Cellular on Tuesday announced entry of its 4G LTE service in the North East, with the launch of the high-speed service in Dimapur.

With this launch, Idea expands its service to nine telecom circles. Currently Idea 4G LTE service covers over 300 towns and plans to cover 750 towns by June 2016 across 10 telecom circles, said Idea Cellular Chief Corporate Affairs Officer Rajat Mukarji.

The company will expand its 4G LTE service to 4 more North Eastern towns of Kohima, Imphal, Tura and Senapati covering three states of the region before the end of the current financial year.

By May, the company will launch its 4G LTE service in Mokokchung in Nagaland, Agartala and Aizwal, he added. P Lakshminarayana, Chief Operating Officer-Corporate, Idea Cellular, said since the last week of December 2015, Idea has rapidly rolled out its high speed 4G LTE network to cover 9 major markets in India.

"We will soon launch 4G LTE service in another key circle of Maharashtra and Goa by June 2016," he said.

Idea Cellular last month announced an agreement with Swedish communication technology multinational Ericsson to deploy 4G network across select Indian telecom circles which serve over 40 million subscribers.

The agreement includes the transformation of Idea Cellular's existing mobile radio access and core network infrastructure across nine circles for 2G and five circles for 3G - enabling Idea Cellular to deliver superior mobile broadband experiences including faster mobile data speeds and better smartphone performance to its subscribers, the company said in a statement.

"We are committed to offering our customers the best possible mobile experience. Transforming our 2G and 3G network will enable us to offer optimised mobile data and better smartphone performance, while our LTE deployments will take the customer experience on Idea Cellular's networks to the next level," said Himanshu Kapania, CEO, Idea Cellular.