India Speaks 3G for the First Time

Author: Business Beyond Reality

New Delhi: State-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd became the first mobile company in India to launch 3G mobile services.

Speaking to Business Line, R.S.P. Sinha, Chairman and Managing Director, MTNL, said, “MTNL has been the pioneer in introducing the latest technologies on its network. We were the first to launch broadband service, IPTV and Voice over Internet Protocol. Now, we are all set to become the first to launch 3G services in the country.”

The service was launched by the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh. Click on the link to view the video of the launch: http://broadband.indiatimes.com/showvideo/3825537.cms

3G services have already become popular in Japan, UK, Hong Kong, Australia, Sweden and Denmark. NTT DoCoMo has a subscriber base of more than 3.5m in Japan. Swedish mobile service provider ‘3’ has a subscriber base of 350,000 in Sweden and Denmark, adding around 150,000 customers since mid-August. In UK, Hutchison is the 3G service provider. India will soon join the elite club of countries that have 3G mobile services with Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL) setting up India’s first 3G network in Delhi and Mumbai. The network will have a capacity of 4m lines and will be operational next year. The total investment in the project will be to the tune of Rs 4,000 crore.

Government has also decided to allow up to 10 players in the 3G space, including eligible foreign players. The 3G spectrum will be auctioned in 450 mhz band, 800 mhz and 1,900 mhz and the guidelines exempt operators from paying any annual fee in the first year of operations. Operators, however, shall be liable to pay an annual spectrum charge of one per cent of AGR after a period of one year. All those who hold a Unified Access Service Licence or those who are otherwise eligible for obtaining UASL as per DoT guidelines of December 14, 2005 would be eligible to apply for 3G radio waves.

Indian mobile telephone operators signed up a record number of over 10 million users in October. At this rate of growth, the total telecom subscriber base is expected to reach 700 million by the year 2012 (covering nearly 70 percent of the country’s population), with about 650 million mobile users and 50 million landlines.

“We expect to see 10 to 15 million 3G subscribers in India by the end of 2009,” said Madhusudan Gupta, senior research analyst at Gartner. “By 2012, we expect only 20 per cent of subscribers to be using 3G. And, unlike the trend in other 3G markets, where the data services used by subscribers make up as much as 30 per cent of the average revenue per user, in India it will be up to 20 per cent.”

Good going India…