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. 

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.

It was recently reported that the Wireless planning Commission (WPC) has cleared the allotment of blocks of spectrum for state-owned telecom operators, MTNL and BSNL -- which gives them the capacity to start offering 3G services by year end, ahead of private operators; which is great!

However, now a recent report by IANS suggests that BSNL will only launch its 3G services in June 2009. So if you thought you could start browsing the Internet over your 3G-device of choice, like the much-awaited iPhone 3G (unlocked, of course), you'd have to hang around for another year.With BSNL's 3G offering looking like a June 2009 launch, that leaves MTNL as a possible saviour to all those awaiting 3G anytime soon. Unfortunately there's no news from MTNL on the same. Right now, we can't be certain if MTNL launches in the next few months, or is delayed until next year as well. Even though the government has cleared the route for the two PSUs to start offering 3G services, we were unable to confirm with our sources just how prepared MTNL is (read: how soon) to offer 3G services.

So the worst-case scenario for potential iPhone 3G owners: if you unlock your device when it launches August 22nd, you will be able to use 3G come June 2009. Hopefully, MTNL will launch its 3G service later this year, or better yet -- the process for spectrum bidding and allocation will be done within this year, allowing even private operators to launch their 3G services late this year, or early next.