Daggers drawn! It's Mukesh Ambani vs Sunil Bharti Mittal

Reliance Jio, which is not even launched yet, is already giving sleepless nights to telecom Czars as many players are gearing up to give tough competition to it.

In a bid to counter Jio, Bharti Airtel is mulling to launch Airtel branded smartphones for only Rs 4,000 by October-November.

To capture the 4G services market, Bharti Airtel is in advance stage to seal vendors.

"Airtel is in advanced stages to finalise vendors to launch dual mode 4G handset in the price range of Rs. 4,000-12,000. Negotiations are around if it should be only Airtel branded handset or co-branded handsets," an industry source privy to the development told news agency PTI.

Airtel is in talks with Taiwan-based Foxconn, which has set up its mobile manufacturing plant in India.

RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani with Reliance Jio Infocomm, the country will get to see 4G mobile phones at low cost.

Meanwhile, sources told PTI that Airtel handsets would come with long term bundled plan but may not be locked only to the Airtel network.

"It will support both FDD and TDD LTE network. It will not be locked handset but will come with bundled plans which the company feels will glue customers to its network. Expected time line for launch of these handsets is around the upcoming festive season of Diwali, say October-November," the source told the news agency.

Reportedly, Airtel had launched India's first 4G services in Kolkata nearly three years ago and 4G trials have started for existing Airtel customers in Delhi, Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Madurai, Chennai, Coimbatore and Mumbai.