4G In India soon

Mukesh Ambani’s next big idea — rollout of commoditised fourth-generation 4G telecom services across the country — is taking concrete shape.

After announcing last month that Nagpur would be a hub for its 4G operations, trials are set to begin for services at Reliance Industries’ (RIL) massive complex in Jamnagar next month, in a pilot before the project is escalated nationwide.

An RIL spokesperson refused to comment.

The megacorp is expected to begin rolling out services using the ultra-fast Long Term Evolution or LTE technology.

The company is roping in equipment vendors such as Huawei (which holds 50% of the world’s market share for LTE equipment), ZTE and Alcatel Lucent for network rollout and consumer devices.

Meanwhile, experts said the government may find it difficult to pull off 4G auctions in the next fiscal.

NK Goyal, president, Communications Multimedia And Infrastructure Association of India (CMAI) said 2G auctions are expected to be announced by December and completed by March 2013.

“So 4G auctions are expected to be announced in January and completed in another six months.”