Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), India’s leading telecom service provider, the government owned telecom company has launched 3G telecom services in Chennai promising to introduce enhanced features and services including rich voice, data and video services, for the end-users.
The service was launched by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, M Karunanidhi making a video call to Union Communications Minister, A Raja.
The company said that it plans to invest Rs 2,700 crore for pan-India 3G services offerings. It plans to introduce the service in 700 cities including important towns and district headquarters.
MTNL has already launched its 3G services in Delhi, Two PSUs, BSNL and MTNL have received 3G spectrum ahead of the private operators who are still awaiting policy guideline clearance from the government before the spectrum auction takes place. The PSUS have atleast 6 months head-start advantage which in all likelihood appears to be extended by few more months.
Earlier 3G mobile services were launched on test basis in Haryana’s Gurgaon and Faridabad areas a few weeks ago.
The 3G platform will enable telephone companies in the country to offer high-end services such as high-speed internet, video conferencing on mobiles, interactive gaming, ultra fast downloads of video and music clips amongst other services. The PM also witnessed for sometime a live telecast of the India-England Test match on a mobile handset using 3G services.
3G makes possible video streaming applications such as Live TV, movie downloads, high speed data download on mobile phones with 3G services enabled.
Callers can also see each other on their mobile phone screens, according to a press release from BSNL.
The new service will offer data speed of 2 Mbps against 144 Kbps available now over the GPRS and EDGE enabled mobile networks.
BSNL is the first mobile company to launch the service in Chennai. Chennai Telephones has installed 25 stations (Node-Bs) in the city for the initial launch and these would be expanded fast.
The Communications Minister said BSNL plans to cover more than 700 cities with 3G services. The mobile network has been expanded making India emerge the second largest mobile telephone market after China.
Over 360 million mobile connections have been provided and this is expected to double by 2012. Teledensity has reached 34 per cent in January 2009 up from 12.74 per cent in 2006.
New initiatives such as bringing down tariff to 40-50 paise a minute, mobile number portability — allowing subscribers to retain their number while changing operators — are in the pipeline.
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