3G for south Indian mobile users soon

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CHENNAI: The BSNL is looking at migrating around 5 per cent of its customer base of over 5-crore to 3G around the middle of 2009, according to Kuldeep Goyal, Chairman and Managing Director.

Mr. Goyal told journalists after launching the 3G services that movie-on-demand, video streaming and video calling were among the services promised by 3G cellphone technology and would reach all south Indian mobile users soon. He said that 9 million handsets would be obtained for the four southern States, while the towers and other infrastructure were also being made by ITI and Huawei. Infrastructure and handsets would be ready for commercial launch by mid-April, he said.

“We have tied up with many cellphone manufacturers, including Samsung, Nokia and HTC, so that handset availability will not be an issue. Data cards will be available at a discount and we have tie-ups with Micromax and Capital,” Mr. Goyal said.

While the cheapest 3G instrument was expected to cost around Rs.7,000, he said that the initial Subscriber Identity Module charge would be Rs.300. Once 3G was launched for commercial use, both local and STD video calls could be made, with charges at Rs.2 (local) and Rs.3 (STD) per minute respectively. The BSNL had talked to different operators about providing content for movie-on-demand and video streaming, as enabled by 3G technology, he said.