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The Communications Minister, Mr Kapil Sibal, said that 3G services were not yet successful.
3G or third-generation mobile services, which include both voice and Internet broadband services, allow high-speed video streaming or uploads, faster data access and less frequent call drops.
“3G has not delivered so far because they (operators) paid such huge prices for the spectrum. And there is no liquidity in the market for them to invest in the infrastructure and in those devices to deliver 3G. That is why 2G was successful and why 3G was not successful,” Mr Sibal told presspersons. He was in Kolkata to launch the 4G services of Airtel.
Spectrum auction costs
According to him, the high 3G spectrum auction costs have affected liquidity of operators that are unable to build the required infrastructure or devices.
Currently, there are nearly 900 million mobile subscribers in the country.
“Even though 3G was launched, the benefits of 3G are not yet seen by the aam admi ,” he said adding “even for the 3G, the handsets are not affordable to the aam admi .” Although 3G services were supposed to allow high-speed downloads and uploads at nearly 21 mbps (mega bytes per second) compared with the existing 2G bandwidth which have a slower speed of nearly 144 kbps (kilo bytes per second), this has not been the case.
Market sources admit that speeds are much lower at around 7 kbps, while device costs have remained on the high side at about $150 (nearly Rs 7,500).
According to Mr Sibal, the Centre was committed to empower people with the help of telecom and its role would only be confined to that of a ‘facilitator'.
The New Telecom Policy, according to the Minister, is likely to be unveiled in May and it was up to the private sector to take it forward.
The IT and electronics policy is also expected to be unveiled later this month (April).
The “real 4G”, he said, will be launched when the Centre auctions 700 Mhz of spectrum.
Current 4G services, Mr Sibal said, are being run on the BWA (broadband, wireless access) platform.
>ayan.pramanik @thehindu.co.in
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