It appears to be a major setback for the people who are waiting for IPTV in India. BSNL said that it'll launch the much awaited IPTV service in India in Feb 2009. This means that there will be no speed upgrades this year.
to be frank ... in my home place ( a village ) just now they have launched WLL service .. how cool ??
a big change for us... dialup >> to WLL it took nearly 5-7 years...
next will be Broadband... which will take another 5 years...
so i simply dont care about thei IPTV or other SH!t....
atleast i hope 3g service will cover all the areas covered under the tower ...
if so i would be glad...
even ifthey say feb 09 ... who knows when they will launch...
^^Even if the government provides them 3G spectrum for villages, operators are not going to pay hefty fees as their revenue won't be good enough to attract them. And if competition is not there, you can imagine what would be the condition of BSNL services.
rural areas have huge potienal, the next telecom battle would be fought over the rural markets. as urban markets are suturated. there is not much growth left in cities. in Small Towns there is Huge Potienal
AFAIK for 3G services companies need to roll out completely new network. Excepting the tower structure offcourse. The equipments will be all new ones which support 3G connections. So its not a mere extension of GPRS which EDGE is.
sure the equipments would be different... but tower and other things are already there .. which were the obstacle in the first place when launching normal mobile services to rural areas and all other places..
3G networks do not use the same frequencies as 2G, operators must build entirely new networks infrastucture.
there is many things are used in telecomunication besides towers.
for 3G, telcos have to install thing like Media Gateway,Radio Network Controller,Base and a base station(Node B).
From consumer point of view, you would notice your phone battery draining faster while on 3g network
i thought it was easy to deploy 3g all over ... now i dont think i will get 3g for another 2 years atleast... i better start a teleco company of my own .. LOL