Dow Jones Newswires reports that Indian operators Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone are close to signing a long-mooted 3G network sharing deal. The partnership would allow all three operators to offer 3G services nationwide; the alliance is necessary because none of these operators own 3G spectrum in all of the country’s telecom circles. Bharti Airtel has licenses and radio bandwidth to offer 3G services in 13 service areas, while Idea holds licenses for 11 service areas and Vodafone Essar can offer the services in nine areas. While Bharti paid INR122.95 billion (US$2.77 billion) for 3G spectrum in an auction last year, Vodafone Essar paid INR116.18 billion (US$2.47 billion) and Idea Cellular INR57.69 billion (US$1.30 billion). The three companies already share their telecom towers and are the joint owners of Indus Towers Ltd., which has about 110,000 towers.

Separately, Dow Jones Newswires notes that Idea Cellular is also due to launch its own 3G services today, following earlier deployments by Bharti and Vodafone. Other operators to have launched 3G services in the country so far include Aircel, Reliance and Tata Teleservices, as well as state-owned carriers BSNL and MTNL. Meanwhile other reports suggest Idea is considering the sale of its portfolio of 7,500 towers that are not part of its Indus Towers venture. The sale of the towers could be worth up to US$1 billion.