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Aircel to launch 3G services by early January (India)


Aircel is planning to launch 3G services in the country by early January next year.
According to Aircel Chief Operating Officer Gurdeep Singh, the company will launch 3G services by early January 2011. Aircel had bagged 3G spectrum in 13 out of the 22 telecom circles. Singh added that Aircel will comply with all government regulations.
In recent times, Aircel had given contract for launching 3G network infrastructure to equipment maker Ericsson in six circles. Other telcos, who got 3G spectrum, like Tata Docomo, the GSM arm of Tata Teleservices had already launched the services. Besides, Tata, Airtel has also announced to launch its 3G services by the end of this year.
Aircel is a mobile phone service provider in India. It offers both prepaid and postpaid GSM cellular phone coverage throughout India. Aircel is a joint venture between Maxis Communications of Malaysia and Apollo Hospital Enterprise Ltd of India. UTSB has a 74% stake in Aircel and the remaining 26% is with Apollo Hospitals. It is India’s fifth largest GSM mobile service provider with a subscriber base of over 46.51 million, as of September 30, 2010.

Aircel Launches 3G Zones In Chennai


Aircel has launched 3G experience zones in Chennai, to allow customers to experience high speed data connectivity. The experience zones have been launched at four locations in Chennai: Atrium2, Spencers Plaza; Fun City, Express Avenue; Atrium Citi Centre; & Aircel Store, PH road. In terms of services on offer, Aircel is offering demos of IVVR (Interactive Video Voice Response), Aircel 3G PocketInternet portal and Video calls. I’m quite keen on taking a look at how they’re going to deploy mHealth with Apollo Hospitals.
Mobile VAS company IMI Mobile* informs us that they’re powering the Interactive Voice & Video Response (IVVR; Video Portal) and 3G PocketInternet service, and have inked a deal to power full scale deployment for the service once it is rolled out. The company says that the content published will be categorized, and made discoverable through full text search, apart from other discovery mechanisms such as automatic recommendations, top rated content and most viewed. Ideally, they should look to incorporate social recommendations and sharing via Twitter, Facebook and Orkut, as well as SMS, and perhaps even surface ‘most shared’ content. Discovery of content is the main challenge for mobile services, and has been for a while.
It’s particularly interesting to note that for users with 3G SIM’s, Aircel will direct users to a separate on-deck WAP portal which will surface high data consumption content like video streaming and video on demand services. 3G, it is expected, will be all about video.
Aircel has 3G spectrum in 13 circles, and has paid Rs. 6499.46 crore for the spectrum. Remember that apart from 3G, Aircel has also paid Rs. 3438.01 crore for Broadband Wireless Access spectrum in eight circles. In Chennai (and Tamil Nadu), they have both BWA and 3G spectrum.
So that’s at least one of the 3G deals closed. Remember that OnMobile Global had acquired Dilithium Networks in the hope of closing those deals.

Tata DoCoMo 3G Tariff Plans Announced



The first privately held company unveils Tariff Plans for 3G Services in India.


Tata DoCoMo had launched third-generation GSM telephony services dubbed as 3G Live in India last week. Now, the company has revealed the tariff details for Basic 3G Plans, Data Plans and even Voice+Data plans for consumers in nine Indian circles. 

Telecom Talk has put up the tariff plans for TATA DoCoMo's 3G Life services. 

Tata Docomo 3G services are available in all the nine circles where it has the 3G license-Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, UP (West), Punjab, Haryana and Maharashtra-Goa. All plans announced would be effective from November 10 in the aforementioned nine circles. Now let's take a look at different 3G Life plans announced by Tata DoCoMo. 

For those who just want to try out 3G Data plans can look out for 3G Data Top-ups which are basic data packs. To begin or experience 3G, one can go for Data Top Up of " Rs. 90 that offers 100MB usage at 21Mbps with a validity of a week. Furthermore if you want to try it out for a month (30 Days) you can go for:

- Rs. 200 Top-up with 200MB usage at 21Mbps 
- Rs. 500 Top-up with 650MB usage at 21Mbps
- Rs. 2000 Top-up for unlimited usage at 21Mbps till 15GB of download and then the speed drops to 256Kbps.

Also, a typical Video Call would cost 0.66 paise per second which sums up to almost 39.6 paise per minute. We're sure you'd rather go for video chat over the Internet connection because Video calls over 3G would require more bandwidth. Unless you don't care for the bills, Video calling is going to be a costly affair.

Small Screen Voice and Data Plans:
Meant for 3G supporting smartphones, these plans are available for both Pre-paid and Post-paid Tata DOCOMO subscribers. Check out the plan tariffs below:





- In addition, there is also a plan available only on Prepaid for Rs." 350. This has 500 minutes (Local+STD) and 150 MB of 3G Data
- These minutes can be used for ALL local, STD and outgoing roaming calls-all calls are on a per-second pulse
- The options are designed at various price points to cater to different consumption levels
- The above voice call minutes and 3G Data plans have a validity of 30 days
- Plans available in both Post-paid and Pre-paid, so customers can choose their payment preference


Unlimited 3G Life:
Carefree Internet users who seek blazing fast browsing as well as download speeds without worrying about the bills should take a look at the Unlimited 3G Life Plans. 





High Speed 'Unlimited' 3G Data Card Plan for Rs. 2,000 has been announced wherein subscribers would get 15 GB of data usage at a speed of 21.1 Mbps and beyond 15 GB would be free 3G with lower speed of 128 kbps.

Tata DoCoMo certainly is bit costly as compared to the BSNL 3G Plans available today. Now we shall wait for other mobile operators including two telecom stalwarts - Airtel and Vodafone to roll out 3G services and reveal their 3G tariffs in the country.