3G video calls to be allowed after demonstration

New Delhi, January 13: The Department of Telecom (DOT) Thursday said that it will allow third generation (3G) video calls on mobile networks and asked the companies to demonstrate the services by July 31.

“It has been decided to permit carriage of calls on mobile networks subject to an undertaking being provided by the concerned service providers that they shall demonstrate the required capability by July 31,” the department said in a statement.

The government also said that in case if the demonstration is not to the satisfaction of the government, the operators can be forced to withdraw the services.

The companies are required to develop technical capabilities and offer these for testing sufficiently in advance so that the process is completed and communication regarding satisfactory testing can be issued by the DOT to the service providers by July 31.

Earlier, the government had asked the operators to provide a compliance report on the security aspects of 3G services to DoT.

Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices are the operators who have launched their 3G services so far.

3G services offer features such as video-calling, mobile TV, video streaming and applications access at superfast internet speeds on a wide variety of both mobile phones and personal computing devices.

–Agencies