India's Bharti Airtel said on Tuesday it had become the first company in the country to offer high-speed Internet services using fourth-generation (4G) telecommunications technology.
The company said high-speed wireless broadband "has the potential to transform India" and to provide a platform for "building the country's digital economy".
"Today's launch is a major milestone for India and Airtel," Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal said in a statement.
Bharti rolled out the 4G wireless broadband services in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata and is working on launching advanced technology networks in other parts of the country.
With one of the largest pools of young people in the world, India will see massive growth in consumption of data and content over mobile devices and proliferation of mobile commerce, analysts say.
4G allows mobile phone users to surf the Internet, at a rate several times faster than 3G services that are still being rolled out across the country.
Analysts say India's rural areas offer huge market potential but erecting infrastructure to support high-speed networks is costly, making urban areas the immediate battlegrounds for customers.
The arrival of 4G comes as India's fast-growing telecoms sector is reeling from a huge corruption scandal in which a former telecom minister is alleged to have underpriced 2G licences to favour some companies, costing the treasury up to $39 billion.
Bharti, which operates in 20 countries in Africa and Asia and has 200 million customers, said after Kolkata it will launch 4G in the high-tech Indian city of Bangalore within the next month.
It said it expected it would take several years for 4G services to become widely used. However, 3G, now common in Europe and the United States, has been slow to take off in India.
Bharti and other telecom firms paid a total of 386 billion rupees ($7.5 billion) in 2010 to purchase fourth-generation wireless broadband spectrum in a fiercely contested auction staged by the government.
Bharti secured 4G spectrum in four of India's 22 telecom areas, in Kolkata and the states of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Punjab, for 33 billion rupees ($650 million).