Third generation (
3G ) services being offered by Indian telecom operators continue to be pathetic as operators are diverting a larger part of the 5 MHz of 3G spectrum, which is actually meant for data services, for voice calls to decongest their voice network.
A top industry official said that the priority before operators now is to decongest their voice network as they fear losing subscribers. Subscribers have been facing congestion on their mobile networks, which has been worsening over time.
"MNP (mobile number portability) is becoming a serious threat to operators and to retain customers they need to strengthen their voice network with minimum call drops than fully use 5 MHz of the 3G spectrum for data services," said a top industry official requesting anonymity. Voice calls still account for over 95 per cent of operators' revenue.
Of the four carriers, each operating at 1.25 MHz totalling 5 MHz on 3G spectrum, hardly one carrier is being used currently by Indian operators for their data services, said an official. Indian telecom operators had bid for 5 MHz of 3G spectrum last year for operating their data services and had paid around Rs 67,719 crore for it.
3G services facilitate faster connectivity for mobile operations and also enable applications such as Internet TV, video-on-demand, audio-video calls and high-speed data exchange. Indian telecom operators have oversold adding over nine lakh subscribers for 3G services in a short span of time, but subscribers have largely complained about its pathetic services.
Telecom experts told Mail Today that with 5 MHz of 3G spectrum it is not possible for the operators to offer the real 3G experience that they had promised at the time of its launch.
"It should be at least 10 MHz to offer the real 3G services and also fully utilise it. Nowhere in the world has 3G spectrum been made available with 5 MHz. In China and other countries, operators were offered 3G spectrum with 10 MHz of spectrum," said an industry expert.
"The number of additional subscribers for voice calls by most of the operators is more than what they had anticipated. When they bid for 3G spectrum last year and by the time they put up their infrastructure, the new additions resulted in congestion of voice calls. As a result they have to utilise a larger part of the 3G spectrum, which was actually meant for data services," admitted a telecom official.
Telecom activist Ajoy Eric Lal said he has subscribed to Airtel's 3G services. "The speed I get on my BlackBerry mobile is pathetic. 3G is
a joke. The 3G services still operate on 2G and its existing bandwidth is being used which is even slower than what we used to get on 2G," complained Lal.
"They (the operator) initially promised us to over 800 KBPS to 21 MBPS of download speed on our mobile. But what we actually get is a few KBPS of speed, which is much, much lesser than what the operators have been claiming. At this speed you cannot think of downloading anything in a short span of time," he pointed out.
Operators charge anywhere between Rs 600 to Rs 2,000 as rental every month for 3G services. Moreover, the high cost for the roaming facility is another cause of worry for 3G subscribers. Most operators charge over Rs 15 per MB of data even if the users are on roaming on the same network. Bharti Airtel leads in the race with three million 3G subscribers, Tata DoCoMo is second with 1.5 million users, BSNL, Idea Cellular, Vodafone and Reliance have about a million each. While operators have managed to add about nine million 3G users in just a few months, they have set the target of crossing 100 million 3G connections by 2015.
Courtesy: Mail Today
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