India Forces Delay on 3G Services

India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has ordered Tata Teleservices to delay its launch of CDMA EVDO based services until the government makes formal policy on 3G services. The government has planned to offer spectrum to the GSM operators so that they can offer 3G services later this year.

Mr Daryl Green, Chief Executive Officer, Tata Teleservices, told The Hindu Business Line that though the company was ready to offer 3G services it did not have the permission to even conduct pilot tests. "We have been told verbally to put off our launch of EVDO services till later this year. If we get the permission we can start services tomorrow. We can offer 3G services using the existing spectrum but DoT feels that the 800 Mhz is a 2G radio frequency and therefore we should wait till the 3G spectrum is released."

However, Mr Green downplayed the impact of the delay. "3G is not really big as of now for us, so we can wait.

Even if were to launch services after the DoT nod, still we will get a head start because GSM operators will take a while to roll out their network based on the Wide band CDMA (W-CDMA), and in my experience, it's not going to be very easy for them," said Mr Green.

The Mobile World notes that Tata Teleservices ended Q1 2006 with just over 4.8 million customers - representing a market share of 5.4%"

Posted to the site on 30th May 2006