Videocon to offer 4G Internet services at 2G prices

Telecom operator Videocon Telecomhas said it will offer ultrafast 4G mobile internet services at existing 2G and 3G prices.   “We will be offering 4G at 2G, 3G rates,” Videocon Telecom Director and Chief Executive Officer Arvind Bali said on sidelines of the LTE India event here. Videocon at present has permit to operate in seven service areas but it has operations in four circles only. The company has plans to launch 4G services by the end of current financial year. “It will take us 3-4 months to deploy technology from the date we place purchase order. We will start from 10 cities initially by end of this fiscal and we will scale as the business grows,” Bali said.   The company has earlier said it will follow strategy to keep prices of telecom services 20-25 percent lower than competition. Bali said typically a 2G network offers speeds of 64 to 144 kilobit per second and a 3G Network offers speeds of up to 144 kbps to 2 megabit per second, while on 4G network one can practically get 5 to 50 times the 3G speeds depending on the available spectrum.   “Further 4G network comes with an advantage of low cost per bit compared to 2G and 3G networks. The advantage of the 4G experience will be the fact that users will be able to download the same amount of data in much lesser time and hence allowing us to accommodate more data download on our network,” he said.   Talking about 4G services at the event, Reliance Jio Infocomm President Sumit D Chowdhury unveiled his book ‘Rules of the Game’ and said 4G service providers will have to look at new ways of handling networks, specially for to machine-to-machine (M2M) communication in coming days .”We have to think differently when we will have machines also connected on network. We will have man talking to machines, machines talking machines through (telecom networks) in future where operators will have to find ways to manage or bill them,” Chowdhury said. M2M connectivity will become prevalent technology in the country in next 2-3 years, he said.   Industry body COAI Associate Director General Vikram Tiwathia said that when M2M technology will be rolled out in the country, government will have to re-visit some of the rules specially present limiting of 10 SIMs that can be sold to a subscriber in a service area.   PTI