NEW DELHI, India-After a one-month delay, Reliance Infocomm rolled out nationwide commercial cdma2000 1x “limited mobility” services in India. The operator has coverage in 92 Indian cities and already has more than 1 million customers, according to CDMA proponent Qualcomm Inc.
The wireless local loop operator, which was due to launch service April 1, delayed the launch by a month due to delays in concluding and implementing interconnect agreements with other cellular and basic service providers. The agreements are now in place, and Reliance customers will be able to make and receive calls from any landline, GSM cell phone or CDMA mobile phone from any network in any part of the country or the world.
However, cellular industry officials linked the postponement to a delay in settling a dispute between WLL and full mobility GSM players in India. The telecom disputes tribunal in April began a hearing in the case.
A tariff battle between India’s GSM operators and the new limited mobility operators is under way, along with ongoing legal battles. The bone of contention is what constitutes limited mobility. The WLL companies hold basic telephony licenses and are barred from providing services like roaming and short message service, although the 1x technology they are using is capable of these services. If they are allowed to offer these services, there would be no difference between their offerings and those of GSM companies. GSM companies have paid high entry costs in terms of license fees, spectrum charges and other levies and continue to pay higher levies under revenue sharing with the government than those set for limited mobility players.
