MTNL become India’s first 3G operator to launch services tomorrow

State-owned MTNL will become the first Indian service provider to commercially launch 3G services when it unveils the services tomorrow coinciding with the India Telecom 2008 event organized by FICCI and DoT. The services will be launched under the august presence of the Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh.

Initially MTNL will offer the services for free for first two months to its premium users. It says that the move is basically to give the subscribers a feel and experience of the 3G services.

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.”

Motorola is providing the core 3G network deployment for MTNL.

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.”