Idea to roll out 3G services by third quarter

Aditya Birla Group company Idea Cellular today said it expects to start 3G services in the third quarter of the ongoing fiscal.

"We expect to roll out 3G services by the third quarter... We are in discussions with vendors for equipment," Idea Cellular Chief Technology Officer Anil Tandan told reporters on the sidelines of the LTE India 2010 conference here.

Idea has won 11 circles for 3G services -- Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, UP (East and West), Punjab, Haryana and Kerala.

Asked if the company has finalised a vendor for procuring equipment, Tandan said, "We are in discussions... We work with four vendors - Nokia Siemens Networks, Ericsson, Huawei and ZTE."

However, he did not give a timeline for finalisation of vendors by Idea. The auction for 3G mobile licences ended on May 19, with RCom, Bharti and Aircel bagging 13 circles each, generating a Rs 677.1 billion (Rs 67,710 crore) revenue windfall for the government.

No single operator managed to bag all 22 circles on offer. The key circles of Mumbai and Delhi went to Bharti, Vodafone and RCom.