Airtel set to start operations for 3G services, successfully tested .

[dr_jimit]

Bharti Airtel said that it has successfully tested 3G applications and is all set to start services as and when the spectrum was allocated.

"We have tested 3G applications at three places - Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore - on a trial indoor spectrum given to us," Bharti Airtel president (Mobility) Sanjay Kapoor said.

The Department of Telecom (DoT) has already announced to allot 3G spectrum through auction and the existing players like Airtel are gearing to start 3G service which enables subscribers much faster downloading facility and also wireless broadband.

Asked whether Bharti Airtel has the technology to offer 3G mobile services, Kapoor said, "We as an operator have 3G services in Seychelles. Our license for Sri Lanka is for 3G services as well and by the time 3G services are launched in India we will have enough experience.

"Moreover, we have SingTel as our partner who has wide experience of offering 3G services," he said adding that for an operator who has 2G operations, 3G is just an incremental service.

On the equipment suppliers, with whom Bharti tested the services, Kapoor declined to specify their names but said they engaged more than one network companies.

Currently Swedish network company Ericsson and Nokia of Finland are vying for market share in the 3G space besides Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE.


http://in.news.yahoo.com/financialexpress/20080401/r_t_fe_bs_india/tbs-airtel-set-to-start-operations-for-3-e247859.html

[W i d e S c r e e N]

Thank you Airtel for bringing a dying technology to India. May you flourish and grow with charging "premium" w/ 3G

[DigitalDude]

^^^^

lol man that was rude... its not a dying technology.... its more a mainstream one in western countries...

it doesnt make sense to the jump from Edge to others skipping 3G.. does it ?


_

[gary4gar]

The Latest news on spectrum is that interim 5MHZ of spectrum be given to 3 Operators ONLY, of which one has to be BSNL/MTNL.

Rest operators have to wait till Defense clears the airwaves.

Which means, Lot of Cat fights:p

[DigitalDude]

^^^

lol wtf.... India at its best :p


_

[harsha]

hmm... I am getting 3G in some (very few) base tower in Kolkata AirTel for at-least 6 months :lol:

[hailgautam]

I always see 3g mark on my phone when i enter the basement of my office building where there is no network at all. thats 3g for you.

[ThinkFree]

Hope to see roll out of 3G soon

[bigdaddy486]

I have told in a previous post that india is growing rapidly in technology stage........

Really, i hope there will be HDTV broadcasting within 2 or 3 yrs in India

[ray|raven]

Wow, and i thought we would get 3G only when the whole wide world stopped using it :p

[rakee]

I always see 3g mark on my phone when i enter the basement of my office building where there is no network at all. thats 3g for you.

He he..same here pal...turn on 3g mode and it is ON...i see 3G icon in my pda..lol...seems its going to be real now :)

[DigitalDude]

I have told in a previous post that india is growing rapidly in technology stage........

Really, i hope there will be HDTV broadcasting within 2 or 3 yrs in India
dream on :p


_

[Gigacore]

Hmm.. I think US ppl are experimenting 3.5 G :rolleyes:

[iMav]

^^ 4g samsun has already demoed it last yr :)

[hellgate]

i think i'll take another 3-4 months b4 the goverments actually auctions 3G spectrum.

[BBThumbHealer]

Looking frwd for its happening.... ;)

[Cool G5]

It's nice to see atleast someone introducing 3G.
But it will be expensive. :(
Hope they reduce GPRS charges.

[ajayritik]

What will 3G technology help in? Faster downloads over the net? Live Meeting etc?

[DigitalDude]

^^^^
much faster than current edge speeds... video calling will be more practical

very good for browsing in internet tablets like n800 etc and phones like iphone... oh! wait not really the last one :p :D

_

[utsav]

They will charge 2000bucks for it

[dr_jimit]

This is what i think,
Just Think,

How many of us really use current EDGE at its full speed ?????\

NOT everyone is getting full speed also.

ThINK also about COST of CONTENT U WILL BE DOWNLOADING ??
What r u paying for current stupidly slow GPRS[also advertised with EDGE upto 300kbps]??? May be ten times more for data usage ???

Not 90 % of people having MMS capabled PHONE have ever sent and received an MMS !!

I am not seeing it successfull, cos, even if its started, it wont be available to a large area, no consistent speeds[ as u see on edge currently] , and SKY HIGH COST of usage.
Till then 4G /WiMax may have become a New Standard.

[DigitalDude]

^^^^^
take a chillpill and a class on optimism :p


but I agree with the MMS thing ;)


_

[naveen_reloaded]

Thats some good news...atleast somebody has taken the initiatives....i just want to get rid of this gprs first...it gets irritating at times...better Airtel start it soon...
Ok does the current tower base will support or do they have to install a new equipment?
What will be the charges?

Will there be any unlimited plan?

Could this be the end of datacard for lappies?

Thanks for info anyway... I have been waiting for this for more than a year...atlast i will be able to use the final feature of my phone... 3G!

[amd64_man2005]

m switching to airtel if voda doesnt offer 3g services...but it would have been better if they had completely disposed of the 3g idea dn had leaped straight into HSPDA(3.5g)..thus we would been more in terms with the western progress..3g is surely a dying prospect..now they even have HSUPA(4g) and we still waiting for the government to line up their defense system and auction for spectrums..bsnl having 3g would be a huge dissapointment..a company which doesnt even provide edge services surely doesnt deserve 3g

[DigitalDude]

^^^

HSDPA and HSUPA all come under 3.5G only ;) :p


LTE would be 4G which is just popping its head....

3G is surely not a dying tech.. not sooner.. its mainstream now..


_

[amd64_man2005]

okk..dint kno that..but form when does bsnl desrve to get a 3g spectrum..crap network in all the metros..and neway..3g is about half an year away..opting for 3.5g would have ben a big boost to india's position in the communication sector

[W i d e S c r e e N]

@DigitalDude
when there is 4G why bother 3/3.5G ?

[DigitalDude]

^^^

its like saying when there is when there is nvidia 9 series cards why bother about 8 series :lol:

actually 4G is not even much in vougue in the western coutries... very recently 3G is becoming mainstream there... and 3.5G is just picking up momentum

even the iphone doesnt have 3G see how well it sells...

then how in India we can goto 4G if we dont have the technology and even if its there it will be at a prohibitively high price ;)

3G is more than enough for browsing speeds comparing the state of broadband in the country..

if simple services like blackberry itself comes under heavy scrutiny imagine how much bureaucracy and regulation is there... (might not be a good comparison but still.. )


_

[shashank_re]

Actually if you read this news article,they just said that they have tested 3G.
In that sense, Tata has tested 3G in 2007 end and they also said that their all India network is 3G enabled and they just need to upgrade software on their systems to offer 3g when spectrum is released.
So theres nothing special about this Airtel launching 3G and iam sure that they(Airtel) will offer 3G only in cities(like EDGE).

And actually,the real power of Vodafone will come to sight when Spectrum is released by the govt(hope it is released b4 i die) bcoz of their 3G expertise in foreign countries. As you can see, Vodafone has the FASTEST 3G(actually it is faster than 3.5G) network in the World.

So all that we can do is to wait...wait...wait and wait till Govt releases the spectrum.

[hellgate]

for starters even if they offer unlimited 3G dl even for 1.5k/mnth then i'll surely take it.gatting damn good speeds thru EDGE now so hope 3G will only inc that.

[DigitalDude]

^^^

they offered unlimited gprs when it was very new... years back.... but they didn't do the same with edge... :(

so I guess we cannot see any unlimited plans when 3G launches... they will just milk the customers as long as they can ;)

1.5k seems a reasonable amount but you never know what will telcos do.. they will surely put a data cap :mad:


_

[harsha]

@DigitalDude
when there is 4G why bother 3/3.5G ?

coz my phone doesnt support neither 3.5 nor 4 G :lol: by the way how many of your phone comes with 3.5 / 4 G support ??

[DigitalDude]

^^^

I have edge thats all :D


_

[W i d e S c r e e N]

got 3g & wireless LAN on the cell, since 08.2006.
No plans to upgrade

[krazzy]

People in India are having 3G phones since the last two years. Still no sign of 3G network. I'm sure the 3G part of these phones will have rusted and died due to lack of usage. The day 3G gets activated, these phones will start laughing hysterically and explode. And the same will happen to us when we hear the cost of 3G.

[naveen_reloaded]

Why dont those slow govt branches..'release the spectrum...morons...

Guess some tariff guys..

[gagandeep]

This is what i think,
Just Think,

How many of us really use current EDGE at its full speed ?????\

NOT everyone is getting full speed also.

I'm using and I get full speed...
Atleast it is better than those CDMA USB Modems from Tata and Reliance at an equal cost......


Not 90 % of people having MMS capabled PHONE have ever sent and received an MMS !!

I agree on this. Make that 90% to 99.9999999999%.......

[krazzy]

The reasons MMS didn't get popular is:
Its expensive.

It needs the other party to have an MMS enabled handset with the service active and

Why use MMS when you can just as easily and at almost no cost email it (that too right from the phone itself)?

[Pathik]

Actually MMS was free by airtel about 2 years back. And it was (mis)used to the fullest by many people. There used to be mailing lists and groups(MMSplus rocked :p ) for all sorts of videos and games/apps. But then bloody Airtel started charging for it.
Neways if 3G is below 600 bucks by any SP then I m gonna go for it.

[harsha]

Neways if 3G is below 600 bucks by any SP then I m gonna go for it.

EEEPC comes with Bluetooth ??

[iinfi]

i thought India wud leapfrog 3g n get 4g first :-)

anyway its good if it is cost-effective.

[hellgate]

Neways if 3G is below 600 bucks by any SP then I m gonna go for it.

600 bucks 3G plan from any SP will be highly data capped plan at least for the starting 4-6 months.

[naveen_reloaded]

Unlimited will cost atleast 2k...

[W i d e S c r e e N]

People in India are having 3G phones since the last two years. Still no sign of 3G network. I'm sure the 3G part of these phones will have rusted and died due to lack of usage. The day 3G gets activated, these phones will start laughing hysterically and explode. And the same will happen to us when we hear the cost of 3G.

+1

[iMav]

well we cant blame the providers the govt babus are so full of sh1t that they tax and this and tht so much tht obviously the cost is gonna be transferred to the consumer

[naveen_reloaded]

Yes rightly said...indirect way to fill their pockets...

[iChaitanya]

600 bucks 3G plan from any SP will be highly data capped plan at least for the starting 4-6 months.


3G is going to cost a bomb! That's for sure?
I hate these data caps! :mad:

[Krazy_About_Technology]

a lil Offtopic: Can anybody tell me whether Vodafone in Delhi has Edge or not? And if it has, how can i detect that on a sony ericsson walkman series phone, any special icon for that?