MOBILE WONDER

Mumbai, March 6: State-owned telecom companies MTNL and BSNL are set to steal a march over private telecom players with the launch of mobile television and IPTV (Internet protocol television).

From April 1, MTNL is launching its mobile TV service. It will offer 12 channels for Rs 99 per month. The channels include Zoom, NDTV and CNBC, said MTNL’s chief general manager (wireless services) Peeyush Agarwal.

The service will be available to MTNL customers having high-end handsets. MTNL has launched IPTV in Delhi and Mumbai and has over 3,000 customers, with a large number on the waiting list.

“We’re slashing prices of the set-top box from Rs 8,000 to around Rs 3,500 over the next six months to encourage others,” Agarwal said.

Reliance Communications and Bharti Airtel have also announced plans to launch IPTV by the middle of this year.

BSNL has introduced IPTV in Calcutta, Pune and Bangalore and will soon launch radio on mobile as well as mobile television.

“We’re also planning a wireless broadband (WiMax) rollout across 1,000 blocks countrywide covering 25,000 villages on a franchisee basis,” said Gopal Das, director (planning and new services), BSNL.

BSNL will go for the franchisee model for the IPTV rollout as well.

By next year, the company plans to add three million broadband and wireless subscribers.

At present, BSNL has a subscriber base of 1.6 million broadband customers. Das said the company wanted to add seven million broadband users, including two million wireless subscribers over the next two years.

WiMax trouble

Reliance Communications said it was having trouble in rolling out WiMax services because of shortage of spectrum allotted to it.

“Given the spectrum constraints we have, it is possible to accommodate only a limited number of subscribers. As a result, the cost of services will remain high,” Sumit Chowdhury, chief information officer of Reliance Communications, said.

Reliance Communications has got spectrum in the 3.3 GHz frequency band and is planning to introduce retail WiMax services in 12 cities in the next three months.