On its Q1-11 financial results earnings confernece call, Idea Cellular MD Sanjeev Aga fielded quite a few questions around 3G. While declining to share specific rollout plans, he said that the company will not be stingy with its 3G launch, and that their 3G coverage will be much more than 25% in less than a year. - Idea Cellular is expecting allotted of spectrum in September, expects all large companies to truly launch services in the months of December, January and February. "You could always sneak in and launch something earlier, but by the time you test, integrate and provision, it would be around that period." Idea expects to launch 3G services within the 2010-11 fiscal. - Idea expects 3G to release voice capacity and data, with data being a function of how many people have 3G devices and want to use data, "but inter alia the voice capacity will also be transferred from 2G to 3G, particularly where there is congestion and where there are 3G enabled terminals." - Of about Rs. 58 billion for the 3G Spectrum fee, only Rs. 19 billion was short-term debt. As of 30th June 2010, Idea had a total debt of about Rs. 98 billion. - Handset Subsidies: Aga doesn't believe that handset subsidies will play a big role in India, and it never has. "handset subsidies work when there are two or three operators. So one big handset guy might tie up with someone. These things do not work when there are so…
