Atul Bindal (left), president of Bharti Airtel (mobile services), and executive director (south) Vineet Taneja at the launch of 3G services in Bangalore on Monday. (PTI)

New Delhi, Jan. 24: Bharti Airtel today launched high-speed third generation (3G) mobile services in Karnataka — its largest circle in terms of market share.

India’s No. 1 operator plans to launch the service in all the 13 circles where it had won spectrum for 3G by March. Bharti had paid Rs 12,295 crore in the auctions for the 3G spectrum last year.

In the circles where it has not won spectrum, Airtel is negotiating with those operators who have spectrum to offer the service to its customers.

Bharti Airtel is the third private operator after Tata Teleservices and Reliance Communications to launch 3G. State-run BSNL and MTNL also offer the service.

“World over, data traffic on the back of high-speed Internet and use of social networking have already exceeded the voice traffic. India is ushering in the domain — though later than most of the world — but no doubt we will catch up at a much faster speed,” said Sanjay Kapoor, chief executive officer (India and South Asia), Bharti Airtel.

There are two plans on offer — time-based plan and flexi-shield plan. While the time-based plan is for light users of data, where use and billing will be by the hour, flexi-shield is for heavy users, where use and billing will be capped.

Earlier, Sunil Mittal, chairman and managing director of Bharti Airtel, had said “there is a large potential to uplift ARPU (average revenue per user) through 3G and data services”.