www.WirelessFederation.com/news: India’s state owned telecom operator, MTNL has scrapped the transfer of 3G network of its units located in Delhi and Mumbai to Spice Group and Virgin Mobile. Several reasons have been cited by the media for the cancellation of the transfer by referring to internal problems within the firm and political pressure from the government. The news of cancellation has been confirmed by Kuldeep Singh, the managing director and chairman of MTNL according to whom, a fresh tender might be issued after government approval as the company is still open to the concept of outsourcing of its 3G networks. The poor subscriber uptake of 3G operations in Delhi and Mumbai following six months of introducing the service made the firm to seek outsourcing of the service. However, the number of subscribers skyrocketed to more than 35,000 from just 1,000 soon after the announcement of the tender. The rapid increase has raised concern regarding MTNL’s marketing and execution strategies. The company believes that its networks would be able to support 100,000 3G customers in Delhi and Mumbai separately over a period of a year after it inks a deal with a franchisee partner. The executives of the telco feel that MTNL is in line to meet these targets so the new management decided that contract terms and conditions will have to be revised upwards steeply but considering that selected bidders were unlikely to accept new terms, the telco had no option but cancel the contract. According to Virgin Mobile India’s CEO Madhusudan Mandyam, Virgin has not received any information regarding the deal from MTNL but if it has cancelled the contract, the earnest Deposit Money should be returned if they don’t plan to go ahead with the tender, but have received no response.