3G is a year away in India

Posted on | December 1, 2005 |

CTO of Reliance Infocomm, BM Jain says that 3G services are a year in India away since there is no customer demand for it yet.

“In the initial stage we would start it in metros than mega cities and than across the country as it does not fulfil the requirement of customers in towns and villages,” claimed Jain.

Meanwhile, Telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran says that 3G telephony in India will be opened up by March 2006. BSNL has also announced to roll out its 3G services around that time.

Ever since the failure of the first round of 3G due to exorbitant bidding for 3G spectrum by telcos in Europe, there has been intense speculation over whether the 3G spectrum should be priced at all. A few months ago, Tata Teleservices chairman Ratan Tata had suggested that 3G spectrum, being a niche service, should be priced. He had proposed Rs 1,500 crore as a fee. Bharti group chairman Sunil Mittal had objected to the proposal.

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