A man packs goods on the back of his bicycle as he stands next to the wall of a grocery shop painted with an advertisement for Bharti Airtel in the southern Indian city of Kochi
Credit: Reuters Photo
Airtel’s 5G offering, which began rolling out in October last year, is now available in all 31 districts in Karnataka, the company said in a press statement on Thursday. This also includes tourist destinations like Hampi and the state’s highest peak Mullayanagiri in Chikmagalur.
The telecom operator also claimed to have 5.1 million users of this service in the state. Last month, Airtel had announced that unique 5G users on its network had crossed the 50 million mark pan-India, out of the total 244 million subscribers it has in the country.
"We were the first telco to deploy high-speed 5G technology in the state,” Airtel’s Karnataka chief executive Vivek Mehendiratta said in a statement.
Despite being available in all the states and union territories of India, Airtel’s 5G network continues to lag behind its main competitor Jio. The latter was recently awarded the ‘fastest 5G mobile network’ title by network testing firm Ookla after it scored 335.75 against Airtel’s 179.49 in the 5G mobile network metric.