Competition hots up for 4G in India

Indian Billionaire tycoon Sunil Mittal warned India’s battered telecoms market must embrace itself for new price wars, as his Bharti Airtel group prepares for the return of Mukesh Ambani the country’s richest man, to the sector this year. Mittal founder and chairman of Bharti Airtel, invested more than £2.8bn ($4bn) in anticipation of Mr Ambani’s Reliance Jio 4G business who has spend more than £11.2bn, $16bn. The looming 4G battle and ensuing price war  between two successful industrialists is unavoidable as India is the world’ s second largest telecom market after China, with 1.2bn population of which 63 per cent under the age of 35. It has the fastest growing digital audience with 820 million mobile connections and over 200million internet users. Reliance Jio aims to create a powerful eco-system and the most extensive and future-proof network in India, on which a wide range of rich next generation digital services over an end to end all IP network, which can be upgraded to 5G and beyond, capable of offering unique combination of telecom, high speed data digital commerce media and payment services.

Ambani was forced to exit an earlier telecom venture in 2005 following a family feud, which handed his mobile business to his younger brother Anil.

Bharti Airtel is investing$9bn to improve network over the next three years making his investment today to $32bn since 1995. The group will install more than 70, 000 new bae stations in this financial year.