Confirming this, Mr Sudarshan Banerjee, CEO, Hutchison Essar, said, "We are installing the GPRS network right now and we should be ready for commercial deployment before the end of this year."

According to industry experts, Hutchison Essar will be spending close to $4 million for setting up the GPRS network. Meanwhile, Mr Banerjee is not unduly worried that the lack of availability of GPRS terminals and applications, will affect its profitability in any way.

"Initially, as was with global system of mobile (GSM) and wireless application protocol (WAP) phones when they were originally launched, the equipment manufacturers do sell it at higher prices, but then after some time, the prices come down to a level which becomes acceptable to the mass market," explains Mr Banerjee.

This is the second Hutchison network in India, which is being upgraded to GPRS. Hutchison Max in Mumbai is also currently installing a GPRS network. However, Mr Sandeep Das, CEO, Hutchison Max, had said in an earlier interview to the eFE, that "GPRS is not commercially viable and hence the company will not roll out its services any time soon."

While in Mumbai, Hutchison had announced its GPRS plans only after its competitor BPL Innovision had done so, in Delhi it has taken the lead. And according to industry experts, Airtel (one of its competitors in Delhi), which till now has been saying it will wait for the international GPRS market to stabilise before venturing into it, may now be forced to follow suit.

According to Mr Viraj Pradhan, business manager, Tektronix India Limited, "The dynamics of the GPRS game will be the same as the dynamics of the GSM game. And market dynamics will force the entry of GPRS. Once BPL installed its GPRS network in Mumbai, Hutchison was forced to follow suit. Now with Hutchison playing the same card, Bharti will be forced to fall in line."

More over, unlike BPL, which had earlier gone for Special Mobile Group (SMG) standard 29 of GPRS and had to re-invest when a newer standard of GPRS - SMG 31 was introduced, Hutchison has the laggard's advantage, since SMG 31 is considered by experts to be a stable and mature standard. "There is no danger of obsolescence any time soon and SMG 31 GPRS terminals are also available at lower prices," predicts Mr Pradhan.