The Hindu Business Line : MTNL floats Rs 1,000-cr tender for 3G services

MAHANAGAR Telephone Nigam Ltd has kick-started India's foray into 3G (third generation) cellular services by issuing an Rs 1,000-crore draft tender for laying four million lines in Delhi and Mumbai.

The State-owned company has called major equipment vendors from across the globe on April 15 for a joint meeting to discuss the project.

MTNL is the first Global System for Mobile (GSM) based cellular service provider to take a concrete step towards migrating to the 3G space.

Private GSM operators such as Bharti, Hutch and Idea have expressed their willingness to move into the 3G domain and have already applied for radio frequency.

MTNL's move comes even as the Government is yet to spell out its policy with respect to 3G services. While the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is grappling with the contentious issue of spectrum allocation on the 1900 Mhz band, the Government is mulling whether to allow direct migration for existing operators to 3G services or to conduct fresh auction of the spectrum.

MTNL has invited equipment vendors to give their comments on the draft tender by April 2. The company has decided to go in for the wide-band code division multiple access technology for offering 3G services. The service is expected to be launched by early 2006.

Third generation services allow high-speed data connectivity on mobile phones. While at present data speeds of broadband Internet services go up to an average of 256 kilo bits per second (kbps), 3G services allow more than 380 kbps on mobile handset. So one can watch a movie, play interactive games, download data from the world-wide Web on the move.

Globally, a number of operators such as NTT DoCoMo in Japan and Hutchison in the UK have deployed 3G services. While the consumer benefits from high speed mobile connectivity, 3G is expected to give a fillip to the operator's falling average revenue per user owing to decreasing voice tariff.

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