Abhay Savargaonkar, Director-Networks, Bharti Airtel said, "Airtel has been at the forefront of India's telecom growth story and this record deployment underlines our commitment to building a world-class network of the future that will serve a digital India." Savargaonkar said "this deployment will leverage our spectrum capacity and is yet another benchmark by Airtel in execution excellence. We are now in a position to ramp up future capacity on this network very quickly, giving us unmatched reach and agility. I want to thank our network partners for their support in this deployment."
"Airtel has deployed 180,000 mobile sites across India in the last two years (FY 16 and FY 17). This is same as the number of mobile sites deployed by the company in the first 20 years of operations," the company said in a statement. "The Company has committed an investment of Rs. 60,000 crores over three years the Project leap," it added. Recently, broadband testing and network diagnostic application Ookla has rated Airtel as the fastest mobile network in India, However Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has asked Airtel to "modify or "Withdraw" the advertisement which claims to be "officially the fastest network". To recall, the whole issue actually started when Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio filed a complaint against Airtel and Ookla in ASCI for claiming that it is the fastest network. Meanwhile, Travel app Railyatri recently said that Airtel has the maximum connectivity on most routes followed by Vodafone and Idea. The company has also released a chart that shows Airtel has 71 percent network coverage en route Delhi to Kolkata, followed by Vodafone India's 58 percent.