How will foreign carriers help the India's wireless market?

India may allow overseas mobile-phone carriers to bid for licenses to provide third-generation, or 3G, services in the world's fastest-growing wireless market, said India's telecom secretary, D.S. Mathur.

The government hasn't decided if it will auction or allocate the airwaves. India also hasn't set a deadline for issuing recommendations on providing spectrum for 3G services."If we decide on auctioning, then anybody can bid, even foreign players," Mathur said. "There is space for three to four operators, including existing ones."

The government's proposal to allow overseas carriers to bid for third-generation wireless services, which allow faster downloads of music and videos on mobile phones, would be at odds with recommendations by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India in September 2006. The regulator wants such frequencies to be auctioned only to existing Indian companies.

India added a record 8.31 million wireless subscribers in August as call rates as low as 1 U.S. cent a minute lured new users. Carriers such as Bharti Airtel, India's largest mobile-phone operator, expanded networks in rural areas, where less than 6 percent of the people own mobile phones.

The growth in wireless subscribers has attracted as many as 30 companies, including AT&T, Indiabulls Real Estate and the Videocon Group, which applied for licenses to offer telecommunications services by an Oct. 1 deadline.

Will allowing foreign carriers to offer 3G Services aid India's wireless market growth?