BSNL 3G mobile services in eastern India

The public-sector Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has started providing its 3G additional video services, on Ericsson’s video gateway platform, in the eastern region of India.

With this, BSNL, the biggest land-line telephone provider in India and the country’s 6th largest provider of cellular service (with over 57.22 million customers), has become the first operator in India to launch 3G video-telephony services.

Now, BSNL has increased the coverage for its 3G services after it was first launched in Kolkata in January 2009.

The 3G video-telephony services offer high-speed internet services through BSNL’s 3G mobile and packet networks – such as round-the-clock video-on-demand, video- conferencing, and mobile TV from all over the eastern region of the country.

In a statement, BSNL said its customers can make use of the following services at affordable rates:

Dial a TV service: This service lets the user watch live TV channels by dialling a short code from the mobile phone for that channel – making it easier for the user to access mobile TV, without having a GPRS configuration in the 3G handset.

Hello TV: Under the Hello TV service, a subscriber can access 32 live TV channels having news, music, entertainment, sports, and devotional channels.

Video-conferencing service: Using this service, the user of a mobile phone can be a part of a conference, through the Ericsson video gateway. This service is ideal for businesses.

According to BSNL, since some mobile-phone handsets do not have sufficient memory to download video content, customers of BSNL can view movies or video clips without actually downloading them since streaming video-content is sent over the internet and displayed in real time. The video-content, sent in a continuous stream of data, is played as it arrives. The end-user, BSNL said, requires the GPRS facility and has to dial the short code, or access through BSNL Live.

BSNL has modified the tariff for its 3G services for both the pre-paid and post-paid customers. The call rates for the video-call from February 5, 2010, for 3G pre-paid general 120 and 3G post-paid are 70 paise a minute, and Rs 1 a minute for local calls. On the national roaming, outgoing local calls are charged at Rs 1.50 a minute, and STD calls at Rs 1.50 a minute. Incoming calls will be charged at 1 rupee a minute.

Journalists can use the video-call facility for convenient and cost-effective live coverage of news, according to BSNL.

Meanwhile, BSNL has said that, in less than a year, it provided 3G services in 318 cities, with 8.56 lakh subscribers. In the first phase, BSNL plans to cover 400 cities by March 31, 2010, and 760 cities by September 2010 – which will include all important cities across India.