India's largest mobile telephone service provider Bharti Airtel Tuesday launched Broadband Wireless Access or BWA services in Kolkata, becoming the first company to offer 4G services in India, which will be managed by Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE.

ZTE will plan, design, supply, deploy its BWA network in Kolkata, and also manage its services.

The services will also be available in Pune in western India, Chandigarh in northern India and Bangalore in southern India soon.

The high speed service was inaugurated here by union Communications Minister Kapil Sibal.

A successor to the 3G and 2G families, 4G is expected to be five times quicker than 3G services. It would offer services such as high-definition mobile TV and video conferencing.

Airtel , which had bagged BWA spectrum in four telecom circles - - Kolkata, Maharastra, Punjab and Karnataka -- for 33 billion rupees (660 million U.S. dollars) in 2010, selected ZTE. The 4G service has the potential to provide a download speed of around 100 Megabits per second when a user is on the move, and can go up to 1 Gigabits per second at a fixed location.

The telecom major has appointed Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) for building and operating network in the Maharashtra circle using TD-LTE - one of the 4G technologies. The company was allocated 20 Mhz of BWA spectrum in 2.3 Ghz frequency band which is considered suitable for transmitting signals for operating 4G services.