India's Bharti prepares for 3G rollout

April 17, 2005

India's Bharti AirTel plans to roll out 3G services on a national level over the next 18 months.

"We are ready with the network for 3G," said Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman and managing director of the Bharti group. "The day the government releases the spectrum, the service can be launched within a few months. I feel the 3G service will be available in the next 18 months for subscribers in India."

It has been reported that Bharti would need to invest around $1 billion to upgrade its network to become 3G enabled.

AirTel is bullish about the prospects for 3G usage in India and is confident about the higher revenue generation capacity.

"There is a need for content developers who can fuel the needs of 3G application…Even today, a few developers are preparing content for 3G services," said Mittal.

Mittal highlighted the fact that 3G services will get a boost with a fall in mobile handset prices.

"The sluggish attitude from both operators and subscribers in adopting 3G-based services is due to regulatory and hardware costs. But this will change in the next 12 to 18 months," Mittal said.

Currently in India, GSM operators are at odds with CDMA operators over the future of 3G spectrum in the 1900 MHz band. The 1900 Mhz spectrum is recommended for use by GSM operators when they upgrade their network to 3G WCDMA technology but CDMA supporters claimed its technology can utilise the spectrum more efficiently and is a natural path for migration to 3G.