Vodafone Essar today said it plans to launch third-generation (3G) services in the country early next year, even as its rivals will start rolling out the service from next month.

"We will go for good coverage and will launch (3G) city by city in the first quarter of the next year," Vodafone Essar Managing Director Marten Pieters said.

Vodafone Essar plans to complete rolling out 3G services in all the 10 circles by the end of the first quarter of 2011, Pieters said.

Vodafone Essar, India's third largest mobile phone operator by subscribers, has 3G radio waves in 10 out of 22 telecom circles in the country, including the lucrative Metros.

3G mobile services will allow high-speed content download and broadband services. Telecom operators who are seeing fierce price war in the market, expects that the 3G services will give them a shot in arm. The high data usage will help the telcos to improve their revenues.

Leading operator the GSM arm of Tata Teleservices, Tata DoCoMo, will launch its 3G services by next month.

Besides, other leading players such as Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications are also likely to come up with 3G services by the end of this year or latest early next year.

Already, private sector telcos BSNL and MTNL offer third generation services.

Vodafone, which does not have an all India licence for 3G, is still in talks with other players to offer services beyond the circles where it has got spectrum.

The company last week named Nokia Siemens Networks and Ericsson as its 3G equipment suppliers.

Vodafone Essar which offers 2G services across the country has a subscriber base of 115.5 million at the end of September 2010.

UK's Vodafone Group, owns 67 per cent in Vodafone Essar while Essar group holds about 33 per cent stake.