Samsung Galaxy S4 has 3G, 4G LTE and even TD-LTE band capability, so may I hope for this to be the flagship of LTE service providers in coming days in India?
@commonman, as far as competition is concerned, I can bet the subscriber will be a winner again. Reliance grossly ignored the rural India for its 3G/ EVDO service and even the 2G CDMA is almost nowhere in many circles. For example you will have to toil hard to find a Reliance CDMA subscriber in rest of WB circle, their mobile internet is dismal leave aside availability of EVDO. Similar is the case of many circles which are predominantly rural/semi-urban. Reliance Jio will find it hard, or rather we, the common subscribers will feel it hard to find Reliance Jio in our small towns/cities.
It's reality a paradox that in a country like India, telecom companies need to provide latest technology (for which they have to bear a considerable cost in importing and setting up capital goods and software) but the tariff cannot be higher/ comparable to global standard. 2G tariff vis-a-vis its cost to company sets breakeven points around end of this decade, while that arithmetic is making 3G proposition almost non-viable in India. 4G foray of AirTel nosedived.
MTS has succeeded where they have tried to invade small towns/cities and from where Tata & Reliance chose to stay away. For example, MTS's sucess story in ROWB circle is mainly based on its strategy to go for 35 cities with EVDO where Tata or Reliance didn't bother to explore. Even at my city which boasts a Central University and where a quite good number of foreigner students come regularly, only MTS has EVDO coverage in full area whereas AirTel & Vodafone have launched 3G on a single tower each.
Now MTS has got the advantage of having spectrum which is technology neutral. With limitation of bandwidth compared to that of Reliance, MTS can try to lower tariff and fight with a different strategy. To provide voice BWA operators operators will need to belch out more to Govt exchequer.