State-owned Indian cellco Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has said that it will be launching 4G LTE services in the near future, with a further plan to introduce voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) in the 2017-18 financial year. According to a report by the Economic Times citing Ultra News, India’s fifth largest mobile network operator (MNO) by subscribers also applied to the Department of Telecom (DoT) in July to use frequencies in the 700MHz band for rolling out 4G services.
BSNL has been working on reducing its tariffs in order to compete with rival company Reliance Jio Infocomm, as it revised five of its post-paid mobile plans to offer additional free data to its customers. No definite timescale has yet been provided by BSNL for its 4G rollout.