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Mr R.S.P. Sinha

Our Bureau

New Delhi, Dec. 9 State-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd will become the first mobile company in India to launch 3G mobile services on Thursday.

The company is planning to give 3G services without any additional charge to its existing premium subscribers for a period of two months on a trial basis. The service is expected to be launched by the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, during the Indian Telecom Summit in New Delhi.

Speaking to Business Line, Mr R.S.P. Sinha, Chairman and Managing Director, MTNL, said, “MTNL has been the pioneer in introducing the latest technologies on its network. We were the first to launch broadband service, IPTV and Voice over Internet Protocol. Now, we are all set to become the first to launch 3G services in the country.”

“We will offer our premium customers to take the 3G connection over their existing connections to start with. We want them to get a feel of the service before we ask them to pay for it. Once our network is complete we will make it available for everyone,” Mr Sinha said.

The company will launch the service in Delhi initially followed by Mumbai in two months. The network in Delhi, however, is not fully complete yet. The service will be restricted initially to the New Delhi Municipal Corporation area and National Capital Region of Gurgaon.

Mr Sinha said that 3G coverage in Delhi will be completed in one month. “We would have been able to complete it faster but there were some issues with the vendors facing the heat due to the economic slowdown. They were saying that they could not deliver the equipment at the cost that was agreed to due to increasing costs,” Mr Sinha said. Motorola is setting up the core network for MTNL’s 3G services.

Mr Sinha said that he expects a large part of MTNL’s revenues to come from the new services such as IPTV, broadband and 3G by next year.

“Broadband service is already generating an income of Rs 400 crore annually. We are getting good response four IPTV and VoIP services too and by next year this time MTNL should get a significant revenue from these new services.”

More Stories on : Telecommunications | Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd

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