| Airtel, Vodafone have 3G edge over other players |
Saturday,August 9th 2008 |
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NEW DELHI: Vodafone’s expertise in 3G and Bharti Airtel’s partnership with
SingTel may them take lead over other operators. While Bharti Airtel will roll
out its 3G services in Sri Lanka by year-end, thus having a six-month lead to
test its services, Vodafone will look to bring its global 3G expertise to India.
While Bharti Airtel has already launched 3G in Seychelles, Jersey and
Geurnsey, Vodafone is credited with rolling out 3G services in global markets
like the UK, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, Spain and others. On the other
hand SingTel, which owns a little over 30% in Bharti Airtel, is a major player
in the 3G space as it has already rolled out such networks in several markets
across Asia.
Bharti Airtel will also have a six-month advantage of
testing its 3G services in the region as it rolls out services in Sri Lanka by
December, 2008. Bharti Airtel plans to rollout 3G in India by mid-2009 only.
Both Vodafone and Airtel may import their successful products and applications
to India.
“We just gave the request for proposal to Ericsson and Nokia
for 3G networks in Sri Lanka,” Bharti Airtel president for mobility Sanjay
Kapoor told ET. “Most of the content will be Sri Lanka specific, but we can also
share some content from our operations here. Over the last year, a bulk of the
deals we have entered into with content developers have been done keeping 3G in
mind. So most of this can be extended to our 3G platform easily,” Mr Kapoor
added.
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