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That, says Trai’s Gupta, will make for more reliable service. Two, barring Augere and RIL, operators won’t have to spend too much on network infrastructure. “LTE in the BWA spectrum works best as an overlay on existing networks and isn’t efficient to deploy in a greenfield scenario,” says Dondeti.

The presence of an existing network will save Tikona 20-30 per cent of the cost, adds Bajpai. Besides, since sharing physical infrastructure like towers is allowed, Augere doesn’t see spending on infrastructure as a huge drain.

In any case, subscribers may not need to choose between 3G or 4G. LTE allows them to be complementary to each other. NSN, for example, has a base station — flexi-multi radio — that has slots for all technologies to run in parallel on a network. Qualcomm has an LTE chipset for mobile devices — including dongles, smartphones and tablets — that is compatible with 2G and 3G technologies. Such “multi-mode” technology will allow people to switch seamlessly between 2G, 3G and 4G networks, says Rajan Mathews, director general, Cellular Operators Association of India.

3G and 4G will also co-exist because they will have different usage profiles, says Bhattacharjee. 3G will be used for more popular offerings on handsets — chatting, interactive games, accessing the Internet and so on. 4G will be preferred by small and medium businesses, police or radio cab networks or people who carry their work around.

But it may not be a cakewalk. There’s no dearth of LTE devices (smartphones, dongles, tablets) globally, but they are not yet easily available in India and are expensive. This, adds Dondeti, could lead to a situation where devices aren’t available or affordable because the service has not taken off. And in a vicious circle, a service may not take off because of a lack of devices.

The answer, Dondeti says, would be for operators to offer the equipment along with the service. Augere plans to do so initially — bundling devices along with the service. It is in talks with tablet PC manufacturers to supply tablets with an LTE chip.

Content too could be an important factor in 4G’s fate. Augere will partner with universities and colleges and offer services that will appeal to the young — games, music and education. The lack of content in non-English languages is a dampener, Stork points out. NSN’s Atri agrees, pointing out that in China there was a close link between broadband penetration and the number of Chinese language sites. There’s been a buzz about RIL investing in media group TV18 to provide content for its proposed 4G tablet, but a spokesperson refused to comment. Airtel too did not answer a question on content offerings.

More than only Internet-based content, operators have to think of innovative services in education, health and entertainment to exploit the potential of LTE, says Patil. They have to evolve from a primarily connectivity-based business to a differentiated services business to lead in the LTE space, he asserts.

Will operators make that shift? Time will tell.