3G not now in India

Long-awaited 3G services in India may once again be placed on hold as the government has asked operators like Reliance Comm and Tata Teleservices to stop their launch of 3G. The telecom operators will only be allowed to resume launching 3G services once they have adhered to the government's security norms for legal interception.

It seems that these norms seem to mostly apply to 3G video calls. The Department of Telecommunications says that for security measures, they need to be able to intercept these video calls in real time. During a demonstration by the telecom operators, the DoT found that calls longer than eight minutes could not be intercepted.


This hold comes at the annoyance of privatetelecom operators as state-owned telecom operators, MTNL and BSNL have been allowed to roll out their 3G services with none of these security issues addressed. 

Reliance Communication had rolled out their 3G services earlier this month in certain zones, aiming to cover the country with 3G by March 2011. Tata Docomo had already launched their 3G services this past Diwali. Vodafon plans to launch their 3G services by Q1 of 2011, whether their launch will be affected by this security hold up or not begs to be answered.


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3G Services now in India

By Koushik Saha on 13.12.08

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Till date, we spent money on buying expensive 3G phones thinking that it will soon be launched but we were always let down. Finally yesterday, 3G services saw light of the day in India withIndian government’s Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) launched the country’s first 3G services which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and Minister for Communications and IT, A. Raja.

The launch took place at the India Telecom 2008 where the 3G connectivity was introduced by MTNL and Dr. Manmohan Singh made the country’s first video call.

RSP Sinha, chairman and managing director, MTNL said, “We believe in providing the latest technology and services to our customers and are proud to be the first telecom services provider in India to launch the 3G service. We are working closely with technology partners like Motorola to providea suite of advanced mobile applications that are not being offered by any other existing carriers. We believe these services will create a paradigm shift in the mobile experience of the Indian consumer.”

With this launch India has come to the global forefront of countries providing 3G connectivity. The 3G services will now equip Indians with abilities to carry out high speed data transfers, video streaming and conferencing, mobile TV, video mobile surveillance and access mobile Internet broadband. 3G will be made available to the metro cities of New Delhi and Mumbai initially.

As of now, only government owned BSNL and MTNL will offer 3G service by 2009. Licenses to the private players are yet to be auctioned, which will reportedly take place by the end of January 2009.


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