Nokia in talks with telcos to adopt its LTE-ready handsets - Economic Times

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NEW DELHI: Finnish handset maker Nokia is in advanced talks with Indian operators possessing 4G licences to adopt its LTE-ready handsets. The company will introduce low-cost smartphones when operators are prepared with their strategies to implement the high speed broadband technology in India, a senior executive said.

"As the Indian LTE landscape has been recently clarified, we are working closely with operators on India plans," said Vipul Mehrotra, director for smart devices at Nokia's Indian, Middle East and African markets.

Nokia has announced that it will begin selling a low-cost 4G smartphone, Lumia 635, for $189 (around Rs 11,300), excluding taxes, this summer, including in the US, but didn't specify if the initial launch will cover India as well.

Mehrotra said that the Nokia Lumia 635 was compatible with FDD band 3 or the 1800 Mhz band, addressing concerns raised by some analysts that the handset may not work on bands which could be widely dedicated to LTE in India.

"Though the specifications for the LTE phone do not mention the 1800 Mhz band, it could mean that Nokia may launch an FDD version of the same model in India," Jayanth Kolla, co-founder and partner at telecom research firm Convergence Catalyst said.

Nokia executives say that the company has been LTE-ready since 2012 and though a number of Lumia devices already in the market had the capacity to use LTE airwaves, the facility to do so has not been activated from the back-end.

Top operators Bharti Airtel, Idea cellular and Vodafone India and new comer Reliance Jio Infocomm had bought airwaves in the 1800 Mhz band in the auctions concluded February with the intention of offering 4G services using LTE technology, which offers high speed mobile internet, almost 10 times the speed of 3G. While Bharti Airtel has launched 4G services in some circles, Reliance Jio is expected to launch them in the October-December quarter of 2014.

Bharti Airtel is the only company in India that has introduced voice services on 4G data in Bangalore, but it adopts the circuit-switch-fall-back (CSFB) technology where data runs on LTE but voice calls are carried on 3G or 2G networks.

"I believe that Nokia will be in the lead to tie up with operators when they begin launching their LTE services in the 1800 Mhz band," Kolla added.

Once the leader of India's handset market with over 70% share in 2010-11, Nokia lost ground to home-bred device makers that launched dual-sim devices at rock-bottom prices.

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