Bharti Airtel and Huawei have teamed up to unveil what they call India’s first LTE TD (4G) smartphone, the Huawei Ascend P1 LTE. The price of the device has not been yet revealed but speculations are it will be around Rs. 30,000.
The Huawei Ascend P1 LTE supports 4G high speed wireless data on the LTE network and voice calls on the 3G network using Circuit Switched Voice Fall Back (CSFB voice) technology. The smartphone runs on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS and is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor.
Other specifications of the device include a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED touch display with a resolution of 960×540 pixels, Corning Gorilla Glass, 1GB of RAM, 4GB built-in storage, microSD card, and an 8MP rear camera with dual-LED flash. The device also supports Wi-Fi, microUSB and Bluetooth connectivity, and ships with a 1,800mAh battery.
“It [4G services] is taking time to ramp up. But it definitely has a wow offer. Right now we are able to offer 40 Mbps of download and 20 MBps of upload speed. The icing on the cake is that the customer pays us around $20 ARPU,” says Sanjay Kapoor, Chief Executive Officer, India and South Asia, Bharti Airtel.
Airtel is the first telecom operator in India to launch 4G services. Earlier this year, the telco launched 4G services in Kolkata, later rolled out to Bengaluru as well. Even as 3G coverage gradually expands in India, 4G services, according to an estimate, are estimated to reach 5 million users by 2013. The growth of the TD-LTE market depends on other mobile manufacturers following suit, such as Nokia, Samsung and Apple, which are expected to launch LTE-enabled smartphones in India soon.
