3G- What is expected in India now?

Nothing much at least until the elections are through. Now with the global slowdown deepening by the day and considering this may not be the top most priority for the new Government, maybe the Auction would move into 2010. I hope my prediction is proven wrong.The best best is if the GoM tries to hurry-up the process and start the auctioning process immediately. But this looks very unlikely

The delay is similar to the TDS-CDMA spectrum allotment in China. After such a long wait, people started calling it as "T(edious) CDMA :)

Text Messaging. A Gold mine for operators

At the outset let me wish you a very happy and prosperous new year 2009!

I chanced upon an interesting article that a friend of mine sent... Approximately 2.5 Trillion Text messages (OR more popularly SMS) have been sent in 2008 world wide. This is expected to be 3.3 Trillion 2009.
What does it take for the Operators to transmit the text messages? close to nothing.. Why? Because the text message is capped at 160 characters and the transmission is on the control channel. Control channel is required for the handset to be "in touch" with the nearest Wireless Tower. Essentially, the control channel is required even if no text message is transmitted. Also, if you send or receive SMS while on a call , the SMS will be transmitted on the same voice channel. Again no additional overhead!!

As you are aware, most operators in the world depending on the country, charge any where between 15 to 20USD per Month unlimited SMS . It is extremely attractive for the subscribers. WoW that's very tempting like the "eat-as-much-as-you-can" OR unlimited food popular in restaurants.

The operators will surely be thanking all the subscribers in making SMS so successful as it adds to their bottom line! No wonder some of the well run Operators' Operating margin is in excess of 35%!!!

Why is 3G important in India

Well! the average 2G spectrum held by operators in India is about 7.5MHz while the international average is about 15MHz. Essentially there is not much spectrum left for growth in 2G. Voice will continue to be the revenue generator in the foreseeable future. Data services although looks promising, may not grow too much due to the unclear cost structure and lack of simple yet effective application for data .

It is still popular to club Messaging to be part of Data services. In a country like India, Data services contribute to about 12% of ARPU with significant portion coming from SMS alone.

WCDMA will be able to pack-in more than 2.5 times the subscribers per MHz compared to GSM and with enhanced voice quality. So, 3G becomes extremely important for any of the existing operators to grow.

Are we expecting some killer applications to swamp the market? Of course Yes, we will wait and watch but voice will be the leader even in 3G!

India's Wireless subsciber base 336.08 Million!

The subscriber data for November is out. 10.35 Million new subscibers have been added in the month of November [ record per month addition was in October '08 - 10.42Million!]

With this, India's Overall Telephone subscibers 374 Million. Overall Teledensity is 32.34%. Thats over 35% improvement in Teledensity since jan'08!

The Indian goverment has set a Target of 500Million Wireless subscribers by 2010. Atleast looking at the current growth rate, and even if we assume some slowdown in the coming 12 months, Target500 should be a reachable target!

Welcome to my blog!

At the outset, I would like to thank my good friend Ramprasad for motivating me start blogging
Ramprasad's blog http://facilitatingimpact.blogspot.com

Welcome to my blog. My interests include Wireless Mobile Domain, Stocks,Finance and Politics. I hope keep my blog updated regularly