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Saturday, March 16, 2019

Airtel Testing LTE 900 (Band 8) in Kolkata

Airtel has launched LTE900 in Mumbai and Punjab circle officially, and another some circles will see Airtel's LTE900 go live in coming days. Airtel is refarming spectrum on 900MHz which is being used for 2G in most circles and 3G in some circles. This is second refarming on 900MHz by Airtel. 

Airtel's LTE900 will be an answer to Jio's LTE850, both can provide better indoor coverage and extended LTE coverage. It should be noted that Jio which is a pure play LTE operator has 98.8% of LTE coverage while Airtel stands second with 90.0%, as informed by Ookla.

Today I have checked Airtel's signals, and even inside the house Airtel's LTE is detected as LTE 3CA. Though I could not find or latch into Airtel's LTE900 my guess is the third carrier of Airtel LTE is on 900MHz, apart from 2300MHz and 1800MHz. 





I found that Airtel's LTE signal latches to LTE2300 and LTE1800 and both cases the bandwidth they are using only 5MHz, but the 3x CA is showing (5 + 20 + 20). I am not sure how much spectrum on 900MHz is used for LTE.

Interesting update: Vodafone Idea is also showing 3xCA. That story is coming next. 
Update: 

Airtel's 3rd LTE carrier is 5MHz bandwidth on 900MHz. As it's being tested, I could get only single time that LTE900 is caught by my apps. 


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