On Idea Cellular's earnings conference call for the quarter ended December 31st 2010, Idea MD Sanjeev Aga said that the company would launch 3G services in its 11 circles in the next few months. He also discussed some other issues - the most interesting among then, a controversial issue around Telecom Operators operating as banks. Notes from the conference call: M-Commerce: Aga said that M-Commerce is really mobile money transfer, but there are still issues with regards to information technology and systems to be enabled both at the level of the bank and the telecom company, adding that m-commerce will not take off until the whole ecosystem is ready, including taking care of factors like settlement agencies, MasterCard, VISA, the Reserve Bank, the regulations, money laundering, Know Your Customer, etc. Idea, which has tied up with Axis Bank, will launching money transfer within India, from Dharavi to some district in either eastern UP or Bihar, but, Aga added, this will not have commercial significance for the company in the next one, two, three quarters. Telco's As Banks: On the ongoing debate of mobile operators were perfectly suited to run banks and in the long-term this technology has the potential of actually displacing existing methods of banking technology. He said that if banking did not have a legacy of hundreds of years, today, bankers would have been carrying, running their systems on the kind of technology mobile operators have, because this is the quickest, safest, real-time,encrypted and cheapest technology. Note that this is in total contrast…
