Week Summary

This week, we will see about different players that are planning to deploy 3G technology in India and competition policies.

Current 3G operators in India

The following is the list of the 3g operators in india which are not truely 3G in nature. All of these service providers have deployment of CDMA2000 1x standard whic comes from CDMA 2000 family of standards.

• TATA Indicom Ltd (from Nov 7th 2002)
• Reliance Info com Ltd (from May 01st 2003)
• Garuda 1X (MTNL, India) (from MAy 19th 2003)
• Shyam Telelink (from Sep 5th 2003

Although CDMA2000 1x capable of higher data rates, most deployments have limited the peak data rate to 144 kbit/s. While 1xRTT (1 times Radio Transmission Technology) officially qualifies as 3G technology, 1xRTT is considered by some to be a 2.5G (or sometimes 2.75G) technology.

Future Service Providers

The State-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd is first off the block and has floated 10 Billion Indian Rupee draft tender to roll out four million mobile lines on 3G technology. The others aren’t just watching. Almost all the Global System for Mobile (GSM)-based operators, including Airtel, Hutch and Idea, have already applied for the radio frequency required to launch 3G services.

India’s wireless services industry is likely to push into 3G services this year as carriers roll out broadband access in big cities and move deeper into untapped rural areas, the head of Ericsson India said.

3G will bridge gap between rural and urban India

3G mobile service is expected to enter the Indian market in a big way by the end of 2006, according to the 'Enabling India's Broadband Economy - The 3G Way' report published by CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) and the US-based Yankee Group. What this means is that the Indian mobile user will be able to relish high speed data transfer via his mobile phones. Transferring digital photos, MP3 music, and even files across to another user with a mobile phone will become a cake-walk. Internet surfing on mobiles will turn common-place. Voice quality of 3G services is several notches better than that offered by current 2G services.

Key facts that I noticed in the news complemented this report.

• Handset costs to fall to $150-200 range, with low-end sub-$100 3G handsets available within a couple of years
• Doordarshan, Indian national TV channel will be one of the first to offer three of its channels on all 3G mobile phones globally from mid 2006 namely DD National, DD Bharati and DD News. More multimedia companies to follow suit.

These factors will ensure a spurt in the 3G services sector in India. The most heartening benefit would be the bridging of the digital divide between urban and rural India. Rural India is yet to see a spurt in computers and Internet access is still a dream, However with mobile penetration fairly high even in rural India, I feel that 3G services on mobiles will bring the much needed Internet access to rural India, thus paving the way for bridging the digital divide.