Airtel 3G to Launch

After the bidding war we witnessed during the 3G Auctions, Indian telcos are all set for another race. To (finally) begin offering 3G services in India. Tata DoCoMo and Vodafone have already announced their timelines for rolling out 3G. While DoCoMo is set to win this race by declaring November 5th as their D-day. Vodafone is expected to begin their 3G operation sometime in the first quarter of 2011. Airtel has one-upped them with this announcement.

During the Auction, Airtel had successfully bid for 13 zones including key cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad. These cities account for 21 per cent of data traffic in the country. They are also most likely to have early adopters who are eagerly waiting to get their hand(set)s on 3G. Incidentally, the 13 circles also account for 68 per cent of the telco’s revenue market share.

Airtel is also reportedly in talks with other operators across the country to ensure that all Airtel subscribers in India have access to its 3G services. The high speed networks deployed will be provided by the likes of Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Network.

Apart from when, the bigger question on the minds of potential adopters is ‘how much’ these services will cost. Most Indians were very lucky to be able to use 2G data services at very low costs, and in many cases – at no cost. That is unlikely to be the case with 3G given the intense bidding battle during the 3G Auction. Several experts had even raised doubts over whether many of the telcos would be able to sustain themselves given the cost of acquiring spectrum, especially if a pricing war was to break out – akin to the one following DoCoMo’s per second pulse.

Of course, promising and actually offering services are two very different things. 3G has been ‘coming’ to India for years now. A year ago, Airtel had estimated they would be able to launch their 3G services by Diwali 2010.

It will be interesting to see how many of them are able to stick to their deadlines. Come November 5th, we will have a clearer picture of what lies ahead.