Vodafone Idea which is rapidly consolidating its network presence across the country by de-duplication of tower tenancies for its two brands is now reportedly on the verge of shutting down its 3G network in the South Indian metro cities of Bengaluru and Chennai, as reported by Abhishek Balaji from Ather Energy, which is an Indian electric vehicle company which manufactures electric scooters. These vehicles come preinstalled with a 3G sim for GPS navigation using the data network.
The forum post informs owners of the Ather 450 vehicle which comes pre-fitted with a Vodafone 3G sim card to switch over to BSNL 3G sims in these cities as Vodafone will be discontinuing its 3G service in these cities on 27th August and it will take the company around 4 to 5 months to develop a 4G upgrade hardware module for the existing Ather 450 scooters and the users would fall back to 2G network if they do not switch to BSNL.
The development was brought to OnlyTech’s notice by a tweet by Srivatsan who is a technology journalist at FoneArena. According to the tweet, Ather 450 owners will be provided the BSNL 3G sim free of cost from mid-September.
It is not clear whether the 3G network will be limited to these two cities only or will broadly apply to the entire Tamil Nadu and Karnataka circles to which these cities belong. Vodafone Idea had said in its recent investors call that the company will focus its resources on only 16 top performing circles which contribute to 94% of the company’s revenues while in the remaining 6 circles it will only focus on selective well performing districts while tuning down investments in the rest.
Is vodafone shutting down 3G in the Tamilnadu circle also?.
Any chances of BSNL launching 4G with VoLTE support (like Jio) with more spectrum and 2G like coverage?.
As of now there is no official confirmation from Vodafone about the 3G shutdown in these cities. Queries sent by OnlyTech to the Vodafone Idea spokesperson remained unanswered until publication time.
As for whether it will be limited to the metro cities in these circles or to the entire circle, we will have to wait and watch.
As for BSNL they currently have only one 5 MHz block of 2100 MHz spectrum available Pan India and they are using that for 3G. They were supposed to be allocated an additional carrier of 5 MHz Pan India but that hasn’t happened due to political reasons so they haven’t been able to deploy 4G on a large scale.
The 2500 MHz spectrum they have in 14 circles but they aren’t actively using that, they might just end up surrendering it like they did for 6 circles in the past for a refund due to stressed financials.
Sudhakar, VoLTE of BSNL was working in my Poco F1 (tested, during my visit in Madurai) before LockDown. I am not sure about the support of other phones…
Hi Esmail :
I miss you at tt website
Hello Sudhakar, you can continue to follow my writing here on OnlyTech. I’ll be happy to resolve your queries posted as comments on our articles.
We also have a community forums section where you can interact with other forum members. Happy reading.
I can predict the reason for that. Its ok.
1) Why is TRAI silent about airtel’s pending AGR?
2a) Has Jio paid all the pending AGR of itself and RGSM?
2b) If Jio has to pay the AGR for RGSM 800 MHz, then airtel also have to pay the AGR of Aircel for purchasing its 4G 2300 MHz AND airtel has to pay the AGR of docomo since it has purchased docomo. Right?
3) Is the current condition of vodafone worse enough to portout?. Your prediction?
1) AGR dues are a matter under DoT not under TRAI. And the government is actively pursuing the matter in supreme court and Airtel has paid up more than Vodafone Idea. The final decision about the payment timeline has been reserved by the court.
2a) Jio has paid the AGR for itself, it is not liable to pay for Rcom AGR dues. It uses Rcom 850 MHz spectrum for which it has paid the SUC, which is all that it is liable for.
2b) Airtel has bought those operators along with their licences and spectrum which is why it is liable to pay for their AGR dues. Jio has not bought out Rcom it has just signed a spectrum sharing agreement with Rcom for which it has paid the SUC.
3) Yes I would suggest Vodafone and Idea users who are facing network issues due to reduction in number of towers to port out to Jio or Airtel whichever is having better coverage in their area.
Airtel VoLTE was working in my Samsung A9 pro 2016. But it has stopped working suddenly (I don’t know exactly from when). Till now they are not solving the problem. Vodafone VoLTE was working. Is airtel purposefully ignoring the old handsets?.
Why is airtel and vodafone VoLTE not working in my Samsung Note 4 SM-N910G and why is airtel VoLTE is not working in A9 pro 2016 (in which Jio VoLTE works fine without any 3rd party app)?.
Samsung Note 4 and A9 pro 2016 were launched before the commercial launch of Jio network. Then how come they are supporting Jio VoLTE without any problem?.
Hi sudhakar, pls write to Randeep Sekhon Sir – CTO of Airtel… randeep dot sekhin at airtel dot com
He is an amazing, very helpful & down to earth guy.
sekhin or sekhon @Rajesh?