New Delhi: India’s long-awaited auction of radio bandwidth for the third-generation (3G) mobile-phone services will be held on January 14, 2010, as scheduled.

Uninor mobile services will kick off in India from Thursday. Uninor is the brand name for the Unitech-Telenor JV which will roll out mobile services in various telecom circles in India. This makes Uninor the latest mobile operator to make its debut in the highly-competitive mobile services market in India. There are already 12 mobile operators in India, including two government-owned companies.

MTNL per-second billing was launched in Mumbai and Delhi today. With this, the government-owned MTNL has become the latest telecom operator to offer per-second billing for its customers in India.

Mobile users in India will now have an option of switching services without losing their current mobile number.

BPL Mobile Communications has changed its name to Loop Mobile. BPL Mobile Communications' brand-use agreement with the TPG Nambiar-owned BPL Group has expired leading to the rechristening of its name.

MTNL Mumbai 3G service Jadoo will be operational in April. 3G services will be available to MTNL subscribers who are using Dolphin and Trump services. Dolphin is MTNL’s post-paid (billing) cellular service, while Trump is its pre-paid service.

BlackBerrys on Idea Cellular have become a reality. Idea Cellular and Research In Motion have tied up to bring the BlackBerry range of smartphones to India. From now, Idea Cellular subscribers can buy and use latest BlackBerry phones like BlackBerry Storm, BlackBerry World Edition 8830, BlackBerry Curve and BlackBerry Flip in Idea Cellular mobile networks.

In a new service plan laid out by Airtel and Research In Motion (RIM), the Indian Airtel user will now be provided with unlimited email and instant messaging (IM) on BlackBerry smartphones for just Rs 499 per month. The new plan is called Blackberry Personal Mail.

Indian Union Minister for IT and Communication A Raja has said in a statement that the government aims to bring mobile number portability in the market in major Indian cities by August 2009 and in the remaining cities by the end of this year.

January 2009 will see the South India's Chennai circle as well as the north eastern region of India wake up to third-generation telecom networks.