India's Reliance Communications has become India’s second private operator to launch 3G services.
It has gone live in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and the northwestern city of Chandigarh. It said it plans to launch across all the 13 telecom circles where it holds licenses by the end of March next year.
It is offering prepaid packages of 299 rupees ($6.63) and 699 rupees, with talk time of 300 and 600 minutes and 200MB and 500MB in data respectively.
RCom said it would form partnerships with 3G licensees in India’s remaining nine circles to provide a pan-India service.
The company paid 85.85 billion rupees ($1.9b) for licenses in the 13 circles during May's 3G auction. It was the third biggest spender, after Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar.
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Private operators BSNL and MTNL launched 3G in 2009 and late 2008 respectively, but rollouts and subscriber take-up have been limited.
RCom 3G head Prashant Gokarn said the company plans to differentiate in the crowded marketplace through offering a wide range of applications.
It has partnered with Facebook, Nokia, Ericsson and others to develop apps. Nokia is also RCom's device partner for the network.
Reliance offers both GSM and CDMA 2G services with a presence in all 22 circles, and had more than 117.3 million subscribers at the end of the September quarter.
The operator's Bombay stock climbed nearly 2% to 2.50 rupees following the 3G launch.
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