Airtel and Vodafone will soon have to compete with Idea in the Delhi circle since the company plans to cut data rates and launch 3G service here by January 2015. The company has also won spectrum through the auctions that were carried out in February this year and it will supposedly receive the bandwidth in December.
Meanwhile, it has resumed offering 3G via intra-circle roaming pacts it has signed with Airtel and Vodafone. This is in line with a TDSAT directive that was issued last week and enables the service provider to deliver its 3G services to customers in 10 circles where it doesn’t own the necessary licenses or spectrum.
Owned by the Aditya Birla Group, Idea Cellular, lays claim to 11 3G licenses and airwaves that it acquired at the 2010 auctions. It recently forked out Rs 3704.8 crores for a 5MHz block of spectrum in the 900MHz band for the Deli circle. Since DoT is a little more loose with which telecom services can be offered on specific airwaves, the company’s recent gain can be used to deploy 3G data and voice to subscribers.
In Delhi itself, the network operator boasts of approximately 5.5 million customers including 1.5 million 2G and 3G data users. The Economic Times reports that the brand has a total of 10.2 million data users, and 10.2% of its mobile services revenue comes from data services only. It hinted at cutting data rates to tempt more people to sign up, while maintaining that attracting and retaining subscribers means quality of services mustn’t suffer due to lower profits preventing maintenance of infrastructure.
Not only is Idea planning to get its 3G services up and running in Delhi in January 2015, it also intends to accomplish the same in Punjab later next year.