Saturday 8 December 2012

Tikona to launch 4G service in mid-2013, starting Ahmedabad


It will offer 4G services with per MB pricing in the range of 10 to 25 paisa.

Tikona Wireless plans to roll-out services by mid-2013 starting from Ahmedabad and Surat in Gujarat and will ramp up to 10 cities in these circles in the first phase. Tikona has won 4G spectrum in five circles that includes Gujarat, Rajasthan, UP-East, UP-West and Himachal Pradesh.

Heramb Ranade, chief marketing officer of Tikona said to The Mobile Indian, "We plan to launch our services in 2013 with first circle being Gujarat, where major cities will get it first. We will follow that with 10 cities across five circles that we have spectrum in."

He also added, "We expect the price of per MB to be between 10 to 25 paisa and because there is paucity of affordable LTE devices right we will initially focus on offering home broadband solutions and data cards."

Tikona will roll-out 4G services using the TDD LTE technology which currently being used by Airtel to offer services in Kolkata, Bangalore and Pune. The same technology will be used Reliance Industries Limited as well.

About the content strategy, Ranade said, "We don't see any need to get into content side as that is being taken care by a separate industry altogether and no operator can match that in terms of scale or variety. We see ourselves as a data pipeline provider and will focus on that only."

All the 4G service providers have the obligation to cover 100 per cent of the urban areas and 50 per cent of the rural areas in their respective circles by 2015.

RIL is also rumored to be planning to launch its 4G services in 2013 starting from Delhi and Mumbai. Airtel is also planning to launch services in Delhi, Mumbai (through partnership with Qualcomm), and Chandigarh.

Aircel, which holds 4G spectrum in eight circles, had earlier announced that it will start rolling out 4G services over LTE TDD network starting from Chennai in December, however till now no further announcement has come from the operator.

No comments:

Post a Comment