Videocon has said that it is planning to start rolling out 4G LTE services across six circles where it has liberalized license by the end of this financial year.

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Arvind Bali, Videocon Mobile Services director and CEO told TelecomTiger that the company is in advanced stage of discussions with Nokia Siemens Network for deployment of 4G LTE services in India. (See full interview below in Q&A)

Talking on the potential of LTE 4G in India he said that the company is betting on the growing data usage and the smartphone penetration.

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“If we look at the smart phone penetration, its growing really fast, by 2015 approx 16% of the total phones in India will be smart phones. and will be the catalyst for data growth in India. So the potential is huge and obviously untapped” he said.

He said that NSN technical team is working on the commercials involved and is likely to give their final recommendation within a month. He, however, did not give exact figure of the cost involved in the roll-out.

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Bali said that the current 4G LTE deployment in India is on 2300 Mhz, and is based on TDD technology, which could be a challenge given device ecosyemt constraint. Worldwide, approx 42% of the LTE deployment is done on 1800 Mhz band, which itself is an advantage since the equipment and device Ecosystem is growing fast for the given band.

“Today many of the smart phones incl Apple and Samsung are 4G complaint which shall give us a ready addressable base. So we will have an edge over other as the data market worldwide evolves” he said.

Videocon has secured spectrum in six telecom circles- Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh East and West Bengal for Rs 2,221.44 crore in auctions held in November 2012.

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