And finally India goes 3G

The Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh, today launched the country's first (3G) mobile services in New Delhi that will provide high speed transfer of voice, data and video. He also inaugurated India Telecom 2008, India's leading international conference and exhibition for the entire telecom system. The two-day event is jointly organized by Department of Telecommunications and FICCI. The Prime Minister released a report prepared by Capgemini, the knowledge partner for this year's Telecom summit on the Indian telecom market. The Minister for Communications and IT, A. Raja made a video call to Dr. Singh using a 3G enabled handset signaling the debut of the high quality service in India. The video streaming applications like 'live TV' was also demonstrated at the inauguration. The public sector MTNL is rolling out the 3G service in the capital making use of the necessary Spectrum allocated to it by DOT. The services will be available early next year in Mumbai and Chennai. MTNL has used Motorola's next-generation 3G network infrastructure to implement the service. Speaking on the occasion, A Raja announced that within one year, all mobile phone subscribers in the country can switch from one operator to another operator providing better services while retaining their numbers. He informed that the DOT has accepted the Mobile Number Portability recommendations, which were pending since 2006. MNP is likely to be implemented in the Metros and category "A" circles by middle of 2009 and in the entire country by the end of 2009. Raja said that after migrating to revenue sharing regime, the telecom sector has contributed about Rs 50,000 crore through license fee, entry fee and spectrum charges till the end of last financial year. During this financial year alone, it is expected that about Rs 16,000 crore will be collected from the license fee and spectrum charges, he added. On the issue of new licenses, the Minister explained that the policy of "NO Cap" on number of service providers in a service area has been adopted as per the recommendations of TRAI. On further reduction of tariff, he said, TRAI has been requested to re-look into the existing Mobile Termination Charges, as the cost per line has substantially reduced due to technological advancement and increase in traffic. Minister of State for Communications and IT, Jyotiraditya M. Scindia and FICCI president Rajeev Chandrasekhar also attended the function.