US cos awarded India MNP contract

US companies - Syniverse Technologies and Telcordia Technologies were recently awarded the contract to provide mobile number portability (MNP) solutions for the Indian mobile phone users by the telecom ministry. I would say the telecom ministry has a lot of difficult decisions to make in these tough times and it is good that they have not postponed the decisions like they did for the 3G auctions.

Now that the general elections are around the corner, the decision on 3G would be taken by a new government at the center and it can be safely said that 3G would take a long time from now in India. While I was looking at this topic I came to know that India was one of the first countries to start the 3G spectrum allocation process by holding a beauty pageant more than 10 years ago. So its a record of sorts that it has taken more than 10 years to still not get the 3G stuff rolling. 3G has been launched by state corporations - BSNL and MTNL in select cities - the number growing rapidly. This has been enabled by the government as the state corporations have their spectrum ready without the need to bid in auctions. Users who want a taste of 3G can switch to BSNL service once it is available in their city. It looks like the service in its current state would cost Rs.2500 ( about USD 50 ) per month for their first taste of 3G. The rate can be expected to climb down once the other players too can roll out their services. However, with the high sums the government is expecting to make from the 3G auctions, it is going to be difficult to offer users cheaper rates.

Make it more - the 3G pie

     Image Courtesy : gadgets.fosfor.se

The new directions coming from the government is the idea of making the 3G license bidding regions called circles from existing 5 to 8. This is in line with the governments intention of making the most of revenue out of the 3G spectrum auction. A larger number of circles would make the amount for each region cheaper but would increase the total kitty. This would also allow smaller players to bid where it was difficult for them to foot the amount for a larger circle earlier. This move will be seen as a small bit done by the government for local players. As we can see the large players would like to have a bigger subscriber base in a bigger circle and would be ready to pay for it.

It has to be seen if the technical persons can give a go ahead about the new circle plan after looking at the feasibility of allocating spectrum in 8 new circles. There might be other objections for the new scheme from other stakeholders like telcos, other ministries, regulators and other policy bodies before a decision is visible. Auction might be possible in the near term only in Feb 09. In the meanwhile the telcos can strategize and restrategize for their best deals. 3G spectrum auction is moving at a slow and steady pace and we will have to see if all the players - the government, the telcos, the vendors and the content providers can cook up an exciting fare in time for the party.

3G rollout India - so near yet so far

Last year saw many false starts on the 3G spectrum auction in India. Of all the frenzied activity witnessed on the 3G front MTNL's rollout of services in the NCR region was the only news to show off and larger subscriber population is yet to see any so much as a date on when 3G services will be available. The government wants to make sure that it wants the spectrum auctions to fetch the highest possible price ( called market price ) in the circumstances of economic situation worldwide. However with every successive delay of the auctions the bidders are getting wary and at best show lukewarm interest as in case of the response to the pre-bid meeting.

Related consequences to the delay in the 3G spectrum auctions are the delay in WiMax auctions and even the MNP developments. The latter also involves an auction process and right now all the delays are being attributed to the policy changes initiated by various stake holders within the cabinet. The government does not have any problem in the delays as the large delays would give time for the mobile subscriber base to build which in the Indian case has been happening at a rapid clip. As time goes, the government will have a better fruit to offer in terms of a larger subscriber base and can expect a higher price. As said before, the bidders are also not very keen at this point of time to hurry up.

All said, the date for the 3G spectrum auction is still 30th January 2009. If something happens by then the auction process goes through, it will be a big surprise as the news that is available points to more delays.

China - 3G approved '09

China goes into 2009 with approval of 3G licences [link ]. China's homegrown 3G platform called TD-SCDMA will be used and advanced in a quest to give primacy and advantage to home industries. Vendors craving for the huge market of the middle kingdom would put in place plans to ramp up on this technology. This is called changing the rules of the game. With growing clout in terms of technological ability and economical prowess, China is positioning itself to reap maximum benefits out of  all major opportunities. Telecom is one area where China has focussed its energies to ramp up and it is not surprising that Chinese companies have become credible competitors to the telecom biggies like Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent et al.

Wishing all a very happy new year 2009 !!

In the news: Bharti Airtel to setup telecom innovation fund

Bharti Airtel, India's leading telco has announced of the setting up of a telecom innovation fund worth Rs.200 crores to seed telecom startups. This is a smart move by the telco viewed with the new telecom developments - 3G rollout, coming of MVNOs and entry of foreign telcos. Bharti Airtel can leverage its licenses, infrastructure assets and pan-India coverage to provide a good platform for telecom startups in turn augmenting its own revenues both organically and inorganically. This first ever telecom innovation fund would be watched closely and its success can spawn other such funds too.

What are the factors that has given this positive spin to telecom entrepreneurship? Here are at least two. Apple with its 3G iphone has left some interesting functinality out and its Appmart platform has encouraged a new industry around it. Nokia's takeover of Symbian has made the OS opensource in effect driving lots of app contenders to develop software and content for its platform. Google though late with its Android platform would not be far behind with its release and would also interest independent software developers to develop for the platform. Telecom startups can make use of such information to target their share of user's wallet

Indian 3G spectrum auction process begins Monday

     Image Courtesy : bioteams.com

The process of allocating 3G spectrum to telcos is to kickstart on Monday with the pre-bid conference to select the overseer of the e-auctions for the 3G spectrum for both GSM and CDMA services. 3G spectrum winners will be known by early October. The auctions are expected to raise U.S.$ 10 billion or more of revenue for the government which would make the telecom department one the the biggest profit centers for the government.

Now what is to be seen keenly is how the telcos - both domestic and foreign take to the e-auction. There have been misgivings about competing in the 2G space from foreign bidders. The DOT had changed the rules so that foreign telcos could merge or buy stake in local players on entering the Indian market and this ought to assuage their feelings.

One more aspect to be watched is the final cost of the 3G spectrum and its effect on the 3G rollout. A high floor price would push the final prices so high that bidders would use up their revenue on the licenses and would have to wait for deploying the network infrastructure - the next step for telcos. This has happened in EU markets most notably in UK. In spite of the delay in launch of 3G services, 3G penetration had picked up fairly well. In the Indian scenario such a thing though wished by telcos might not be so easy. This would need very competitive end-user tariffs and very impressive differentiated services. This would call for huge spends upfront before a good monetization trend sets in. Setting an optimum floor price would hence be the challenge for the telecom ministry.

The challenge for TRAI would be to oversee proper timely rollout of 3G services in all circles with undue delays by the telcos. TRAI would also have to keenly look at how and what kind of recommendations are to made on the MVNO policy. This would also be critical as many foreign players might prefer to enter the market as MVNOs in order to avoid high license fees. TRAI's recommendations would some day tell on the rate of penetration of 3G services in India.

The challenge for the telcos would be about offereing high quality differentiated services and  make enough money to reinvest in their new new 3G networks. In this respect the telcos would also need to fix attractive tariffs that would work for them too. Another aspect telcos would be focussing on is MVP - mobile number portability - which might necessitate a rethink of telcos' strategies about retaining and growing subscriber bases.

The challenge for the user is to embrace 3G technology without falling for hype and demand high quality services from the telcos by rewarding the best offering and not to look at price alone.

Cheap(er) SMS - Why we need it

Cheap SMS is a possible thing for telcos. I mean cheaper SMS than the current rates. Current rates of national SMS are at Rs.1 per SMS. Considering that there are 160 characters in an SMS this works out to 7490 SMS per 1 MB. At Rs.1 per SMS this would be Rs.7490 per MB of SMS. At Rs.0.5 per SMS this would be Rs.3745 per MB of SMS.

160	characters per SMS
140	bytes per SMS
7490	SMS per 1 MB
7490	Rs. for 1 MB of SMS at Rs.1 per SMS
3745	Rs. for 1 MB of SMS at Rs.0.5 per SMS

Now compare this with voice calls.

13.2	kbps for a voice call
33	bytes per frame of 20ms
1650	bytes per 1 sec of voice call
99000	bytes per 1 minute of national long distance call
10.6	national long distance calls per 1 MB
10.6	Rs. per 1 MB of national long distance calls at Rs.1 per call

The price of SMS is found to be 350 to 700 times costlier than voice calls. Why this is so? If we go back in memory, mobile calls were also ruling very high. There were times when an outgoing call costed Rs.16 and an incoming call Rs.8. Across the markets this was the general trend when telecom watchdog bodies brought about directives and enabled legislation to reduce the tariffs of mobile calls. For doing this the watchdog bodies called mobile telephony a "basic service" and asked the governments to reduce their various charges towards the basic service and also pressured the telcos to reduce their tariff. SMS, as opposed the basic service of mobile telephony, is called a "value added service" (VAS) and the efforts of the watchdog bodies were not so strong for value added services. Though SMS prices have come down, they have not matched the voice service and we continue to pay very high prices for small pieces of the bandwidth offered by SMS.

Why cannot SMS prices be lower? The keyword here is value added services. If SMS can be reclassified as a basic service, telcos would be forced to reduce the SMS tariffs inline with voice services. SMS can well be classified as a basic service as users have started to use the service for basic needs like finding the best prices for their produce to getting storm warnings. There can also be texting providers similar to long distance providers to open up the market. You can already purchase bulk SMS from a variety of sources. However, a service like SMS should also have eat-as-much-as-you-can flat rate tariffs like web tariffs. This would be the ideal situation for the market.

In the cusp of 2G and 3G services now, it is time we had better SMS at cheaper rates. With 3G there will be many opportunities for pursuing new value added services. SMS can be kept basic.

Entry of foreign telcos

If reports are to be believed the government is very keen on addressing the apprehensions of 3G spectrum bidders who had shown lukewarm interest in the 3G spectrum auction process initially. As per the policy change planned the foreign telcos that win a bid for the 3G spectrum can buy or merge with local players who have 2G spectrum. Whether they have to pay more for it or not, the door will be open for entering into 2G services as well. In the existing framework, winning foreign 3G bidders would have to wait for 3 years before they can get into 2G services which will have them at a disadvantage over local telcos who would have their 2G spectrum added with the 3G spectrum they would be allocated after the auction. This planned move is found to be advantageous to such players as AT&T who have been waiting for long to taste the 3G pie in India. This is also seen to be an opportunity for Indian non-telco majors to get into the scene through tieups with foreign players. Though we don't know at present how such entities will have a piece of the 2G spectrum very essential for a having a level field, we know of wishes of Mahindra and Videocon to
enter the Indian telco scene. It will be interesting to follow the spectrum sweepstakes...

Delays and more: 3G Road is still being laid

The finance ministry and TRAI - the telecom regulatory authority have expressed reservations about the 3G spectrum auctioning process as well as over other points of the 3G policy. If these developments are going to delay the 3G auction process, the delay is seen to benefit the state players - BSNL and MTNL. BSNL and MTNL would not need to participate in the 3G auctions as their spectrum requirements are virtually allocated already. They were expected to have a lead of at least 6 months over the existing GSM operators and the new UASL players. With the delay in the 3G auction process, this lead time is expected to grow, thereby benefiting BSNL and MTNL.

Apart from this development, the 3G auction delay is also expected to benefit Reliance Communications. RCom has been awarded a pan-India GSM licence and since it would take almost 12 months to rollout their GSM network, RCom would be ready with their network in the delay period.

Even though the telecom ministry has sought the clarify that there would be no delays with respect to the 3G auctions, and has also started the process of finding the auction agency, and also rebutted the finance ministry charges, it can be expected that some amount of delay would be there in the completion of the 3G spectrum auction process.

Well.. to 3G phones

When 3G arrives, these are the handsets that you might be using -

Apple's IPhone 3G (is a nobrainer).
What you will love in Apple's offering is its excellent Safari browser, iPod+iTunes and GPS.
What you might not like is the disorganized application pages, poor BlueTooth features, no MMS support, no video recording. Available from 22nd Aug...

Nokia's N96 ( is a cool phone )
You will love its high speed connectivity, superb camera ( 5 MP ) with video recording support, improved FlashLite integration ( those YouTube videos will play superbly ), loads of internal memory, Digital TV support, WLAN support and great GPS support.
What you might not like is the jaded user interface, no touch screen support ( have to wait for 5800 whenever it comes ), no music store ( coming soon )

BlackBerry Bold ( boldest one from BlackBerry)
You will love the customary email support, good connectivity options, improved GPS, handy camera, streaming options, QWERTY keyboard and an amazing half VGA clear screen.
What you might not like is ordinary web browser, big form factor, no music store.

I'll later profile any other handset that captures the imagination

First 3G moves

3G Spectrum proposals of state corporations - BSNL and MTNL have been
cleared very quickly after the 3G policies were announced. BSNL and
MTNL as always will have a lead over private players in the launch of
3G services who have to wait for the spectrum auctions. However if this story
is to be believed  some of the players have already completed a trial
run of their 3G service offerings over an year ago and may immediately launch the
services once the auctions are over.



Actually there are a lot of 3G capable devices out there in the field
and with handset vendors expected to push more on 3G handsets one can
expect 3G services to drive revenues for the service providers.
However, for 3G to have a compelling presence content frameworks should
be developed and marketed in innovative ways.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

MNP and 3G guidelines released

This post comes after (quite) sometime and the last post was when there was some frenzied activity on 3G spectrum. Well, Indian authorities have released guidelines for 3G and MNP as of last Friday. With this we can safely assume that the rollout of these services would take another year from now.

The government has decided to allow 10 players to grab the 3G spectrum at stake. With the spectrum being limited, these 10 players would have to make do with their smallish allocations to roll out their 3G services to their targeted subscriber base.

MNP may threaten undifferentiated offerings and poor service and service providers may have to evolve strategies around the idea of unsatisified subscribers easily switching providers more easily than before.

3G Round Up - Infrastructure

I ran some searches on the Wireless Trends CSE for the latest 3G deals and trawled the following results.

Ericsson chosen by Siminn in Iceland for deploying WCDMA/HSPA network.

Ericsson chosen by Emobile in Japan for deploying WCDMA/HSDPA network.

Ericsson chosen by Vodafone Spain for deploying WCDMA/HSPA network.

Ericsson chosen by Mobily in Saudi Arabia for deploying WCDMA/HSPA network.

Nortel chosen by FarEasTone in Taiwan to provide WiMax network.

Nortel chosen by Chunghwa in Taiwan to provide WiMax network for healthcare service.

Nokia-Siemens chosen by Mobile Telesystem OJSC in Russia to provide WCDMA/HSPA network.

Huawei chosen by Moroccan Telecom in Morocco to provide UMTS/HSPA network.

Huawei chosen by KPN Mobile in the Netherlands to supply UMTS/HSPA network

ZTE chosen by ClearTalk Wireless in the USA to supply CDMA2000 EV-DO network

ZTE chosen by PGH in Estonia for UMTS/HSPA network

Alcatel-Lucent selected by Siminn for GPON access solutions to migrate fixed voice services

Make out your own scores.

Qualcomm targets WiMax with 3G technology for laptops

In its strategy to counter WiMax, Qualcomm has announced [InformationWeek] a 3G chipset that provides connectivity to laptops on UMTS HSPA and CDMA2000 EV-DO networks worldwide. Along with 3G connectivity the Gobi chipset also has support for GPS.

Qualcomm claims it is enough that laptops are equipped with the Gobi chipset for 3G connectivity clearly taking a potshot at Intel-backed WiMax.

Qualcomm has the support of laptop maker HP and telcos Vodafone and Verizon Wireless all of whom have come out with statements welcoming the Gobi chipset.

For the telcos the chipset is an exciting prospect with possibilities of tying in the laptops with data plans a la mobile phones. However it has to be seen as to how the chipset will be bundled -with both the HSPA and EV-DO options together or if the users will have to choose one of them.

Intel would have an edge in persuading laptop vendors to bundle WiMax chipsets and Qualcomm would have to forge more deals with laptop vendors to take its Gobi chipset forward.

3G is just happening and if telcos roll out more of UMTS HSPA and EV-DO networks then it is good news for companies like Qualcomm and Ericsson. On the other hand if it were WiMax networks that get rolled out the most by telcos then Intel and Nortel would benefit the most.

Number Portability Directions

Mobile number portability has been introduced in the U.S. , the U.K., Australia, Korea, Japan, Canada, Pakistan and most countries in Europe. Introduction in India needs a push from the telecom department in terms of setting firm goals for the telcos. Telcos obviously are apprehensive about the move since they have to invest a lot all for opening the gates of churn. But they have to realize that number portability would make them more competitive and better organizations striving to meet the expectations of their subscribers and raise their levels.

Since number portability has been on the table for quite some time now, I am sure telcos would have had devised their strategies for it. The telecom department can go ahead on this front boldly as the move is after all a long overdue benefit due to the consumers. One opportunity for the telecom department is to mandate number portability for all new 3G service rollouts. This can be a given for the telcos so they do not have to complain at a later stage. This is good also as 3G with its focus on value-added-services has an inherent deterrence on churn.

There is one more point in favour of the telcos going in for number portability. What it is! Their new 3G services will take off well with number portability introduced across the spectrum of services. 3G adoption will be faster with number portability.

One more thing I can see is that telcos would start looking at new markets including rural hinterlands as part of their number portability strategy offsetting telecom department's apprehensions on this front.

To conclude this piece, I believe after the initial churn Indian telcos would learn to manage it quite well by building value and devising strategies.

BSNL's broadband, WiMax moves

I read a story in LightReading about BSNL, the state-owned telecom service provider calling for a tender to supply GEPON (Gigabit Ethernet Passive Optical Network) for its planned broadband network. GEPON is a popular network access technology delivering 1Gbit/sec over ethernet on a passive optical network and would be an essential part of the triple-play services rollout planned by BSNL. If we go by past business record with the ADSL rollout, UTStarcom Inc is considered to have a good chance of landing the deal.

Coming to WiMax, BSNL is all set to call for a wireless broadband tender very soon according tot the same story. For this tender there are many vendors who could fit the bill including Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola Inc, Nokia-Siemens Networks, Nortel Networks and the Indo-US vendor Telsima. Telsima has already supplied WiMax equipment to Reliance Comm and Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited.

So you can see the pace gathering and we can watch out for more news on the infrastructure deals that would start the 3G rollout in India.

WiMax gets nod as a 3G standard

WiMax has been approved as a standard for 3G services by ITU as reported by IHT, WirelessWeek. What this means is that WiMax technology can be now deployed in the 2.5 - 2.69 GHz licensed spectrum bands. This announcement will push forward 3G spectrum auctions in many geographies at a rapid pace.

WiMax technology brings broadband to wireless offering data applications 10 megabits per second to 40 megabits per second speeds under most conditions. Intel has been promoting WiMax for sometime now and the approval is seen a shot in the arm for the technology's adoption in devices ranging from laptops to mobile phones.

WiMax had been contending for approval with at least two other technologies - LTE ( long term evolution ) promoted by Ericsson and Ultra Mobile Broadband promoted by Qualcomm. WiMax had gained momentum by the backing of personal computer makers - Acer and Lenovo and mobile phone leader Nokia among others.