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...

Soul searching for Symbian

A nice editorial feature on AAS on what makes most impressions. If it is a phone the impressions are with an iPhone and not an N95 8GB. Steve, here deliberates on the impression factors like screen size, brightness, vivid colors, form factor. Added with a new way of interacting with gadgets it makes the package irresistible. Symbian phone makers - Nokias and Samsungs should weigh in these factors too even though their numbers are healthy.

A lot of phones out there could do a lot more than the iPhone, but for an iPhone user these might be the features that she does not bother about. Even some of the power users, would have realized the shortcomings of iPhone later and bore with it. That is the effect of impression-based sell.

The economics of handset development is skewed towards incremental development where the life of a base model gets extended with minimal changes to the basic interfacing for umpteen models and that's what happens when you have successful model like the Nokia N Series. A close study will show that even without touch, the Symbian interface needs a makeover to create that cool impression with ordinary folks.

News: Internet Telephony legal in India

The restrictions on internet telephony have been removed with TRAI - the telecom watchdog allowing unrestricted use of internet telephony for NSD (STD). A new number scheme is being worked out that will be used by the ISPs to provide telephony to subscribers. This move is seen to lower the STD rates.

Reflecting on it, some of the major ISPs ( Bharti Airtel, Tata Indicom, Reliance ) are telecom providers and the removal of this legal barrier would help them to leverage their IP infrastructure effectively in reducing the tariff for national long distance calls. This would also provide the major non-telecom ISPs ( Satyam ) to foray into internet telephony to augment their revenues.

IP telephony is already allowed in international long distance calls and Satyam which does not provide basic telephony already provides ISD facility to subsribers using this provision.

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

Handsets sales pegged at 1.28 bn

According to a new Gartner report, mobile handset sales are to see an upswing of 11% over 2007 to 1.28 billion units. This is notwithstanding decrease in demand in Europe and Japan. The higher demand in Asia-Pac is expected to compensate for the drop in Europe and Japan. The report also notes that handset vendors would bolster their revenues with content services ecosystems a la iTunes of Apple. New entrants like Ovi from Nokia and PlayNow from Sony Ericsson also into the content and differentiated services game. Motorola is planning its Motomusic launch to compete with iTunes.

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.

Google Mobile Challenge

Read cellular-news story on Google's mobile take. The story posted yesterday highlights the timing of Google's move as pointed out in previous post with data and figures. Mobile advertising seems to have not worked out so far in a big way. Google has brought "Open" in a big way to mobile and it has to be seen if this could do what IBM PC did for personal computing. Let you do your own thing. Imagine what will happen when a device manufacturer provides a basic compatible device on which you can download a binary image from an open source choice. While such a scenario might not involve users switching software too often, what it will provide is the decoupling of hardware and software. Applications can be written on their own as a business and they will sell. The Android-based platform would give rise to the first true geek phone. And Google is very intent on making this happen...



The big bet is that quality internet is available on the phone and Google makes money out of it. That's the thought. However I think that the bigger challenge is to have the users to use the internet in the phones immersively and it calls for innovative experiences with MMI. With the $10 million purse availble for the developers of new apps for Android platform we can expect some action here..

Google's mobile foray

Google might have timed right its move(IHT) into the mobile phone software business with the announcement of the Android platform through the Open Handset Alliance. Data services are playing an ever increasing role in the revenue models of telcos and with burgeoning 3G services and increasing handset processing power, the handset market may well overshadow the traditional PC market and this is happening in some markets like Japan already. ( I'll try to write a story about this one sometime).

The Google business model for handsets seems to rely on replicating their successful advertisement-based revenue model on PCs onto handsets. Though there will be no Gphone, like iPhone, phones running on the Android platform are expected to rival the latter in terms of usability and applications.

There is a promise of "open" systems and standards with Android which is supposed to open up the networks and devices. This is expected to bring to the consumers a rich internet experience at low to moderate cost.

Google has lined up an impressive array of partners in its mobile venture including semiconductor players, telcos and software companies. The first phones may well take into second half of next year to appear.